Seven Come Infinity

by Groff Conklin (Editor), Murray Leinster, William Tenn

Seven superb tales of possible worlds where...
television covers the inhuman side of the news;
ingenious social planning makes every man a dictator;
computerized brain repair proves too successful;
spaceships vanish in the fourth dimension;
the competition for habitable planets inspires an interstellar hoax;
peculiar bugs appear and things, literally, begin to fall apart;
a highly developed society exists without the clutter of technology.

Carefully selected and edited by Groff Conklin, each of these stories represents the work of a master in the field. Taken together they make a collection of great diversity, imagination and creativity, especially designed for the connoisseur of science fiction.

Contents:

Preface • essay by Groff Conklin
The Golden Bugs • (1960) • novelette by Clifford D. Simak
Special Feature • (1958) • novelette by Charles V. De Vet
Panic Button • (1959) • shortstory by Eric Frank Russell
Discontinuity • (1950) • novelette by Raymond F. Jones
The Corianis Disaster • (1960) • novella by Murray Leinster
The Servant Problem • (1955) • novelette by William Tenn
Rite of Passage • (1954) • novelette by Chad Oliver

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Edward Groff Conklin (September 6, 1904, Glen Ridge, New Jersey - July 19, 1968, Pawling, New York) was a leading science fiction anthologist. Conklin edited 41 anthologies of science fiction, wrote books on home improvement and was a freelance writer on scientific subjects. From 1950 to 1955, he was the book critic for Galaxy Science Fiction.

Reviews

[Cheryl]

The Golden Bugs • Far from Simak's best. Too long for the payoff, too casually written. But his humor is refreshing compared to so much serious SF by others. I'm glad I didn't skip this story of tiny crystalline alien hive creatures, but then I'm a Simak completist.

Special Feature • Interesting variant on the kinds of dystopias that were being written back then. Think more about the premise. a world in which 'tv' ratings matter even more than life (at least of unimportant ppl) than the story or characters themselves and it's more likable.

Panic Button • Russell is good at the short zingers. This makes a quick point in a witty way, with the bonus feature of being told from the aliens' pov.

Discontinuity • Weird infodump tech & science, but it's apparently based on what the author understood about the work of a real guy, the polymath Heinz von Foerster. ... and it is an interesting exploration of ideas of how our brain could, we imagine, work more efficiently, and if it did, would we be supermen, or rather normal men cured of a defect?

The Corianis Disaster • Long, but not for the word count... Leinster was really trying not only to tell the What If story but also to have some interesting people interact with each other. Imo he didn't fully succeed on either, but if you have this story to hand don't skip it.

The Servant Problem • Makes a good point, but not really SF. Just a future setting where the Throne, and the Power Behind the Throne, both believe that they have Complete Control over *all* humanity. But who really does?

Rite of Passage • And finally the reason to seek out the book, or at least this story (try isfdb, open library, gutenberg). Oliver, the anthropologist, has a certain focus in his stories, but still each one is different, and they're so beautifully written that, imo, every one is worth reading. Nice to close the volume with an optimistic, utopian vision.

So, how to rate? 4.5 stars for the last story, 2 or 2.5 for the rest... ack... leaving it unrated.

[Camilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Save for the first one, this is an interesting mix of sci-fi stories. Honestly the first story contributed nothing to this collection. It left me a bit anxious while reading, thinking the rest would follow such a dry tone. But thankfully that was not the case. So here's a quick sum up of my thoughts on the seven stories from this book:

The Golden Bugs by Clifford D. Simak 1/5 stars
This tale takes place in a boring set of suburbs. Then golden bugs from outer space invade. At first they are perceived as helpful, and a possible scheme for selling them off occurs. However as the bugs make themselves at home, it is shown to be to the detriment of earth's inhabitants. They are dealt with, and that's that. I felt like this had so many possibilities, but it was treated like a cut and dry episode of a generic cop show. Books that offer up an interesting plot device, but make such trivial use of it greatly irk me, and this was no exception.

Special Feature by Charles V. DeVet 2/5 stars
A cat-like alien finds herself crash-landed on earth. She goes about hiding in the population, while sneakily indulging in her bloodlust. However, she is spotted immediately by cameras, and her antics are put on view as a specialized live TV program. It's a record setting show. As more people lose their lives to the feline menace, the government threatens to take her out. The man behind the TV program decides to end the show with an "epic" ending; assassin versus cat. There's the final showdown, and that's that. It's not a particularly memorable story in any way.

Panic Button by Eric Frank Russell 3/5 stars
I rather enjoyed this story, especially the ending, but the plain language used detracted from the overall effect of the story. It starts with two races that aren't exactly enemies, but don't exactly get along that are both in a battle of sorts for discovering and claiming planets. A group of Antareans come to a planet they believe to have found first, only to discover a lone Terran already inhabits it. They find the Terran is a criminal serving his sentence of fours years. If he finds other beings on the planet, he is supposed to hit a blue button, which emits a blue light. The Antareans figure it is a signal beacon of sorts, and abandon the idea of disposing of the Terran. They move on to the next planet.

Discontinuity by Raymond F. Jones 3/5 stars
This story delivered quite an intriguing concept, but at times the language was dry and a bit to work through. A scientist, David Mantell, has a system in place for reviving brain dead people into functional people again. However, every past case has proved fruitless. Each patient ends up suffering from aphasia, the inability to comprehend and speak language, and end up talking garbled nonsense. Mantell himself ends up suffering from 60% brain damage from severe head trauma. His team decide to revive him anyway. He too awakes with aphasia, and escapes the lab to find other patients the procedure had been done on, in hopes that his new garbled language is shared with others. His theory proves correct. His new compatriots find that they are actually evolved, with their emotional region of the brain no longer holding an inefficient filing method in their heads. Their new language is extremely more efficient than normal language. Their dialogues take place within a minute or so, compared to an hour with English conveying the same information. They go about constructing a plan to reconnect with English speakers, while retaining their new efficient understanding of the world. It proves successful, and serves as a platform of possibility for evolving the rest of humanity eons ahead of where it currently sits.

The Corianis Disaster by Murray Leinster 4/5 stars
This book encompasses a problem of hyperspace travel, which is revolves around the passenger ship, The Corianis. On a voyage between planets, it encounters a bulking hunk of metal, which normally provides no problem for the ship to skip around in hyperspace. However, this hunk is so large, it forces the ship to jump into another reality where it does not crash into the meteor. This creates two versions of the ship, which both land at the destination. Chaos ensues as important political figures claim his and her clone is an impostor. Tensions rise. One mathematician, who happened to come aboard the ship by chance, does not have a clone on the other ship. He doesn't seem perturbed by the idea that he might have a clone on the original planet the Corianis came from either. After a few weeks, with the help of a team, he conceives of a way to repair the fractured instance of two ships by having them attempt to collide at the speed of hyperspace, which ultimately sent the second ship back to the original timeline where it almost collided with the metal.

The Servant Problem by William Tenn 3/5 stars
A man who has come to lead all of humanity, is unbeknownst to him, being manipulated by his right hand man. In turn the right hand man is being manipulated by one of his trusted advisors, and that advisor is being manipulated by a technician he is working with. It's an interesting story about the play of politics, and the influences of power through different people.

Rite of Passage by Chad Oliver 5/5 stars
It was refreshing to have this book end with this story. It was well written, interesting, and delved deeply into the possibilities it presented. Three men are the lone survivors of fifty-four, from the ship Juarez. Unable to properly man the ship for the long journey back to earth, they find an inhabitable planet close by and decide to land. They find what they assume to be a primitive species, but in fact is far more advanced than themselves. One of the three survivors ends up deciding to live with the people from the planet, called the Nirn. I don't want to go into many more details, because it is such a lovely story that I don't wish to ruin with a less than great review of it. If you happen to come across this book, and only have time for one quick story, I highly recommend you choose Rite of Passage.

[Skjam! · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of this anthology refers to the phrase “seven come eleven” from craps, referring to the ways you can win. In the preface, it’s mentioned that there are a finite number of possibilities for the outcome of rolling two dice. But when you write a story speculating on the future, the possibilities are infinite. Will these seven stories be winners?

“The Golden Bugs” by Clifford D. Simak starts us off in 1950s suburbia. An insurance salesman is living a reasonably comfortable life with his wife and son, but there’s that one neighbor he hates. It’s an engineer that is building a robot orchestra in his home and insists on testing their musical abilities first thing in the morning. Also, our protagonist’s house has a bug problem.

This is not the first time he’s had an insect incursion (the grease ants have been a recurring issue) but this is most assuredly the weirdest. The little golden critters look like nothing on Earth (according to the retired entomologist next door.) At first, they’re mildly annoying, then turn helpful…and then scary.

The golden bugs are nicely alien, and their motives are never clear, only their actions, which may or may not have anything to do with their attitude towards humans. The threat level multiplies as we learn more about the bugs’ capabilities. There’s a comedy twist when the protagonist figures out a plan to deal with the bugs that might have worked, but the music-loving neighbor puts his better plan into operation first.

“Special Feature” by Charles V. DeVet opens in Saint Paul, Minnesota, as a murderous alien infiltrates the city one winter night bent on mayhem. She’s confident the stupid humans will be easy prey as she learns to fit in and kill her way to the top. What she doesn’t know is that she’s already been caught on camera.

And that’s where the story gets interesting. For in this future, the surveillance society is not run by the government, but by the entertainment companies. There are cameras nearly everywhere in the city that can be operated remotely, and content providers scanning for anything they can sell to the networks. Vern Nelson is one of those workers, and he spots the alien before it makes its first attack. He realizes how exciting this will be and gets exclusive rights to make a reality show of it.

For the rest of the story, we watch Pentizel as she cleverly figures out how to pass for human (at least from a short distance) and schemes to conceal her presence from the locals as she picks them off. We also watch Vern as he finds ways to exploit Pentizel’s actions to attract an audience (and advertiser dollars) without ever letting her know her every move has been watched. (Well, almost every move. The broadcast standards people decide that even if it’s an alien, “no bathroom stuff.”)

Eventually, the authorities decide that ratings or no, Pentizel has killed once too often (that is, someone who isn’t a homeless person or a criminal) and the show must end. Vern has to find a way to finish the program with a bang!

Television was still in its early days when the story was written, but in some ways it’s eerily prescient. Suitably updated, it’d probably make a great movie.

“Panic Button” by Eric Frank Russell concerns an Antarean exploration mission looking for new inhabitable planets. They’ve found one, the problem being that there’s an inhabitant, an Earthman. And he’s already pushed the big blue button on the wall.

The situation is pretty transparent to the savvy reader, but the fun comes from the aliens debating over what they’re going to do each time new information comes in, and their contrasting personalities.

“Discontinuity” by Raymond F. Jones is about a new experimental process of computerized brain repair. Among other things, it uses the memories of people who know the patient to help rebuild the parts of the brain related to those relationships. Unfortunately, everyone who’s been treated by the process, while now able to get along physically, is completely aphasic, unable to communicate or understand communication.

When the inventor of the process suffers massive brain damage as the result of a murder attempt, he’s subjected to the process (over the objections of his wife, the attempted murderer) in a last-ditch attempt to perfect the operation. He, too, emerges aphasic.

However, unlike previous test subjects, Dr. Mantell is not immediately restrained, and is able to escape. He soon discovers that his mind is functioning just fine, other than being completely unable to understand human language (including gestures.) Then he meets other escaped subjects and learns that he can communicate with them.

Dr. Mantell realizes that they have in fact become hyperrational superbeings, and the reason they no longer understand human communication is because it’s inherently irrational enough that their refined minds are no longer able to handle it. In order to survive, they will need to find a way to, well, dumb themselves down to talk to the humans.

This story uses the “10% of the brain” thing, though not by name. More annoyingly, it uses the cliche common in Fifties SF of “wife of scientist that doesn’t understand or care about science and is therefore horrible to him.” To the writer’s credit, Dr. Mantell realizes (now that he’s hyperrational) that he was a total jackass to her himself and is equally responsible for the failure of their marriage.

The story ends on a pro-transhumanist message, as an ordinary human begs to be the next one uplifted. Chilling if you’re not into hyperrationality as the next step in human evolution.

“The Corianis Disaster” by Murray Leinster concerns the title starship, stuffed to the portholes with planetary dignitaries (and one physicist), which has an accident with its faster than light drive. It takes a couple of hours to replace the burned out parts, so the ship is late to its destination. Or is it? It seems that the Corianis landed a couple of hours ago.

Each ship appears to be identical to the other at first, right down to the passengers. (With the exception of physicist Jack Bedell, who is not duplicated.) Since the appearance of these doubles might be the work of sinister forces, neither ship’s personnel are allowed to disembark.

Most science fiction fans will realize what happened immediately, but Mr. Bedell takes much longer, and none of the civilians ever grasp the truth before he finally kind of sort of explains it towards the end. They’d rather believe in evil alien shapeshifters, or witches. It doesn’t help that Mr. Bedell seems incapable or unwilling to put things in layman’s terms.

This is another one where Fifties social norms date the story. Women are wives, nurses and secretaries, not government officials or scientists. Mr. Bedell’s love interest is a secretary who doesn’t get what he’s talking about but can tell he’s the only sane man aboard.

“The Servant Problem” by William Tenn starts “This was the day of complete control…” and ends “THIS WAS THE DAY OF COMPLETE CONTROL.” In between, we meet Garomma, the Servant of All, the humble dictator of the world. He enjoys thinking about how he has domesticated the entire human population into thinking he serves them instead of the other way around. Then we pull back a bit to meet the man behind the man. And the man behind the man behind the man. And….

It’s a fascinating look at social power structures, and how systems become self-sustaining.

“Rite of Passage” by Chad Oliver rounds out the book. Three survivors of a plague ship take a shuttle down to the nearest planet. The natives appear primitive, but are reasonably friendly. One of the survivors, an anthropologist, realizes that appearances are deceiving and the local culture is far more complex than it first appears. Also, there’s evidence the plague survivors aren’t the only technologically advanced visitors around.

This fits into the category of Utopian fiction more than anything else, as the Nern society turns out to be better than the visitors’ in just about every way. (Think the civilization version of that Japanese decluttering method.) Lots of infodump towards the end.

I liked “Special Feature” and “The Servant Problem” the best. “Rite of Passage” is a little too taken with its message for my tastes.

This volume does not seem to have been reprinted past 1967, but some of the stories may have been collected in more recent books. Keep watching garage sales!

[Kris Simonian · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection of stories from the '50s and '60s (all pre-Moon landing). The stand outs include The Golden Bugs by Clifford D. Simack, Panic Button by Eric Frank Russel, Discontinunity by Raymond F. Jones and Rite of Passage by Chad Oliver.