Dwellers of the Deep

by Barry N. Malzberg

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact

Synopsis

What! A science fiction novel about science fiction fans? And why not? Or - like it says in this novel: "Do you really think that a group of science fiction fans could save this planet? Could understand this situation to save it?""I most certainly do," she says. "Who else?" Who else, indeed? Not since Frederic Brown's "What Mad Universe" has there been a novel like this.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 113

Sample

Introduction to a collector, July 3, 1951.

Izzinius Fox comes out of the Astor Place station of the Lexington Avenue IRT blinking, slightly bedazzled by the sun, choking apprehensively on fumes which trucks exude as they stagger up lower Park Avenue. He takes a brief orientational stare at John Wanamaker’s, then strikes out purposefully for the Book Stall; his stride twinkling powerfully against the routine background. Still shaken by his encounter on the South Ferry local with the Rhelm people, he tries to now put it out of his mind, concentrate on the goods he expects shortly to find; but the last words of the Arch-Leader himself ring in his mind, overtaking the thinner and more familiar thread of the Izzinius Fox stream-of-consciousness.

“Be reasonable,” the Arch-Leader is saying. “Come on now, it’s not only for our sake but for the sake of all the peoples of your planet we only want to liberate. We’re goings through this too often already, Fox. Now the time has come for stronger measures. Will you or will you not give us the article?”

“No,” Fox had said with all the firmness he could manage, choking meanwhile on the fumes within the spacecraft. “No I won’t; you see, I still don’t believe you.”

“Don’t believe us, eh?” the Arch-Leader had said in a terrible voice while the surrounding and lesser aliens mumbled. And Fox had felt a thrill of terror go through him at the sudden force in the monster’s tone. “Can’t believe us after all we’ve done for you? Well, we’ll have to take severe measures then, Fox; severe measures indeed.”

And then Fox had been out of the ship, spiraling gracefully back to Earth again to find himself in the clattering subway as it eased into the Astor Place stop. It had been a numbing experience; surely the most threatening since the aliens had somehow seized his mind two weeks ago. And he resolved to himself right then that if it didn’t stop soon he would have to, against all his principles, probably seek professional help. Now, however, it is already somewhat pushed away: he is concentrating on the Book Stall. And as he goes into the musty interior, and toward the small alcove in the back where Stuart Wiseman maintains his science-fiction collection, Fox gives way to the earlier mood of the day which had been bright: Stuart had phoned him to say that a February 1948 Tremendous had come in.

“Is it there?” Fox asks, as he comes into the alcove to find Stuart sitting perched calmly on his chair, reading an old issue of Terrific Terran Stories under a reading lamp. “No one took it did they?”

Stuart gives him a long easy smile—really a great guy for all his small nastiness—takes off his glasses, rubs his hands, and say: “I promised it to you, Fox; isn’t that good enough? It’s right here.” He takes from beneath him a mint edition of the precious Feb. ’48 Tremendous, the famous Balsch Adorer glowing blue at him; the familiar logotype clear and plain.

“Came in last night,” he says. “Some guy over in Bensonhurst sold out his collection; he’s getting married. Few later he’s going to buy the whole thing back but he doesn’t want his wife to get the wrong ideas about him.”

Fox takes the magazine from Stuart’s hands, his own fingers trembling slightly as he runs them over the glistening cover, the slightly raised impression coming through to him; then turns it over to find that the back cover has a rip. Nothing very serious, but a clear deadly indentation running down the middle of the Audell Auto Manual advertisement. “How did this happen?” he says. “I thought you said mint.”

“It’s mint. Back cover means nothing. You can’t even see that tear. Besides, I can’t be responsible for what happens to a magazine when a guy packs it. Do you want it or not?” Stuart says and half stands from the stool, adjusts the string on the dim overhead lamp which provides the only faint illumination back here and then sits, closing his copy of Terrific. “I mean, I gave you first offer because I know you needed that one to fill, but there are plenty other guys who I could have called, any one of whom—”

“Oh,” Fox says, “oh, I’ll take it.” The possibility that the issue might be taken from him fills him with dread. Rip or no, he needs this one desperately to clear his files of Tremendous through 1948; with it he can go clear back to June 1947. (May 1947 is another rare issue.) “Is it a dollar, right, the usual price?”

“No,” Stuart says, “it’s got to be a little more for this one. I paid double my usual to get it because of the condition and the guy didn’t want to give this copy away anyway”. Stuart winks at Fox, says, “He said he knew it was a rare issue, and he wanted to hold onto it for starting a new collection which he says he is going to do just as soon as his wife gets used to his way. This one’s gotta be three dollars.”

“Three dollars?” Fox says. It will be the most he has ever paid for a magazine, excepting always the ten dollars he paid Stuart six weeks ago for vol. 1, no. 1 of Thoughtful-Stories, mint condition, just as it came out of the plant. But vol. 1, no. 1, as Stuart himself had told him, was always an investment: fully guaranteed to go up immediately in value from the very day you bought it, hardly a magazine at all in that sense. But three dollars for a routine, barely three-year-old issue of Tremendous is something else again.

Fox takes out his wallet, considers the thing carefully. He is due, of course, to sign for another unemployment check this afternoon and in the bargain he is still five dollars below his weekly budget. But there is the question of extra rent coming up because his landlord installed a window in his furnished room and also he has the feeling more and more now of disappearing margins—edges being approached. He has been out of work for three months.

“Look,” he says, “can I pay you two dollars today and the other dollar next week? I’m a little bit short.”

“I’m sorry,” Stuart says—to show that he is hardly sorry at all. He is a nice guy but there is simply little give in him.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Izzie. It’s just that I’ve got a very solid item here; you don’t get many of those around and for anyone else the price would be five dollars I only gave you first crack, you know, because you’re such a customer and I happened to know that you had a special need for this one and had the request in … but it’s not fair to others to give you a break on a low price. Not when they’re all waiting. I got three calls this week from customers saying ‘Got the Feb. ’48 Tremendous in?’ Matter of fact, I could kind of use this baby myself, you know, for my personal files; it being a rare issue and all that. It’s okay, Izzie, you can pass it up, even after my making a special point of calling you this morning and holding it on reserve and so on. I don’t care. I take a lot of trouble for certain customers only to get disappointed.”

“No!” Fox says and realizes with some embarrassment that he has screamed; three old ladies prowling in the outer bookstore’s Marriage & Childbirth section look at him with bright and victimized loathing. He lowers his voice and says, “Stuart, please Stuart, I’ll take it.”

Removing three dollars from his wallet, he puts the money the Stuart’s palm and then snatches the magazine away before Stuart can think better of the deal. The thought of actually losing it after agonizingly having searched out this issue for months appalls him; he holds it lovingly. A strange heat seems to curl up from it as it slides so easily, so inevitably into his palms: a beautiful melding. He knows that he and this particular issue were made for one another, and he opens the contents page, looks at the familiar names and stories, and feels himself tingling with narrow anticipation. It was really an excellent issue; and in particular he can hardly wait to read Cupboard’s “The Green Death”: the first and (reportedly) the best of the Space-Surgeon-in-exile series under Cupboard’s pseudonym of Ronnie Lafebvre.

“Thanks Stuart,” he says hoarsely. “I really appreciate this.”

“Oh, it’s my pleasure, Izzie. Want to look over the stock? We just got some new Thoughtfuls in.”

“No thanks,” Fox says. Thoughtful and Thrilling are the two newer science-fiction magazines, both started only a year or so ago. Although they have more “prestige” than Tremendous, as well as most of the old Tremendous contributors, Fox has for them only a dull kind of loathing, a feeling of disconcerted loyalty to Tremendous itself which for a decade or more was the jewel of all the science-fiction magazines and which will endure forever. He thinks vaguely for a moment of talking to Stuart about the Rhelm people, what they are doing to him, the strange events of the last couple of weeks. But Fox decides against it: Stuart could probably not understand this and in the bargain might take him for being insane—risky business when you are trying to live a normal twenty-three-year-old life in New York City,

“Well thanks,” he says. “I guess I’ll be in again toward the end of the week you know. Call me if the May ‘47 Tremendous comes in.”

“Sure,” Stuart says. “Incidentally, there’s a meeting of the Solarians next Thursday. If you’d like to make it I’d be happy to take you over. They’re going to discuss the early work of Teck Jones and I think you’d enjoy it”

“Stuart,” Fox says. “Stuart, I told you about those things, I don’t want to go. I’m not a fan, I’m a collector.” Fox is dimly aware, of course, that there exists a whole substructure of people who not only accumulate the magazines but gather to talk about them socially and that these people are called “fans”. But beyond a kind of puzzled revulsion he has no other feelings, certainly no curiosity. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer,” he says.

“Well, it’s up to you, Izzie. There’s a whole wonderful group of people who feel just the way we do and like to get together to talk about it. But, hell, I can’t force you.” Stuart winks. “Bet you can’t wait to go home and put that thing on the shelf, right?”

Fox gulps, nods in embarrassment, looks down at the floor feeling quite discombobulated. Stuart is the only one who really understands him—that is a truth.

“Right,” he says. “But I’ll want to read it first, of course.”

“Well, good luck then,” says Stuart “Enjoy it, it’s a nice issue anyway,” and returns to the issue of Terrific, belching slightly.

Disconcerted as always by the strange and rapid way which Stuart has of terminating conversations—it is as if Stuart loses interest in the whole thing the moment a deal is made—Fox backs out of the. . .