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Beyond Infinity
Robert Spencer Carr is a storyteller of wit and imagination. These stories of his - ingeniously plotted, sparkling with life, written with a sure hand - are triumphant examples of science-fiction at its best.Beyond InfinityAn elderly couple, after spending their lives in a fruitless quest for the secret of eternal youth, make the first flight into space to find it.Morning StarAn intruder from another planet - a woman baffling as she is beautiful - slips into a secret weapons conference of the world's greatest atomic scientists.Those Men From MarsMartian envoys visit Earth, one landing on the White House lawn, another at the Kremlin - and the world waits for them to choose sides.MutationThe last man on Earth lives a life of fear - will the new race be composed of supermen or subhumans?This is a book to satisfy the most exacting s-f fan - and to delight the reader for whom science-fiction is still a strange and mysterious realm.
- GenresScience Fiction
223 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1951
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 30, 2014
Flashes of brilliance, dragged down by ridiculous notions of domesticity.
This book collects three novellas and one short story by Robert Spencer Carr; two of the novellas were published in The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s, fulfilling science fiction's long-hoped wish to break into the slicks and respectability. All four share the same strengths and weaknesses.
Carr could turn a phrase, and the first three stories start out promising. Check out the first paragraphs of the titular novella, first printed here:
"It made him feel like a beachcomber, to stroll back to his office after a long, late, leisurely lunch, wondering what rare and curious new business maters the tides int he affairs of men had cast upon the small shore of his desk in the hours he had been gone.
"He rode up in the elevator full of warm well-being, sirloin steak, and an affable readiness to be entertained. Perhaps the murmuring gray city had washed up a pearl, or fragrant ambergris, among the driftwood of the day. There might even be some money in the afternoon mail, he thought hopefully, and smiled."
Or this neat little bit from "Morning Star," the story that launched him into the SATEVEPOST:
"For this is what makes man divine. Not his animal nature, but the spiritual bravery to believe in a miracle when he sees one. The sheep, that night in Bethlehem, merely bleated at the Star. It took three wise men to follow it, to hope, to find."
These lines nicely set up the spiritual aspects the underwrote the space race. Which is one of Carr's themes. And they also came from early in the story--which points up one of his weaknesses.
Carr starts with interesting premises, and the language is precise. "Beyond Infinity" is about a detective who only searches for missing people--murder was too commonplace, disappearances had something uncanny about them. "Morning Star" has a security guard preparing for the meeting of the most profound scientific minds in the world to discuss some problem. "Those Men From Mars" (aka The Easter Eggs) has a strange craft landing at the White House. Only "Mutation"-the short story, and the weakest piece in the collection--starts slowly, with a man fishing and reading a burned copy of the Bible.
The tone in the first three is knowing, subtly or not telling the story from some future, which the writer assumes the reader shares; the point of view character is one who has reason to be at the center of action--a hired detective, the security guard, friend of a white house correspondent--but is otherwise a fairly minor presence: not the two competing astronomer who join forces in the dotage, not one of the scientific geniuses, or the strange women who breaks into their meeting, not the president, the correspondent, or his lady-love, the secretary who becomes the only one capable of communicating with the Martian that has come to the white house. Again, only the last story is the exception, with the protagonist the father of some horrid mutant.
This early precision of language and intensity of story, though, soon peters out in all but "Those Men From Mars." There is a setting, excitement--then mostly talk, talk, talk. The detective finds the missing couple all too easily, and then awaits as they are sent into space--against the law!--only to return seventeen minutes later but, thanks to relativity--younger when they left though they had seen much of the solar system. (There is a limp gesture at the end that they had not seen enough, that it might still be some kind of hoax). The four great scientific brains meet, but then they are bowled over too easily by the Venusian who has snuck into their meeting--an interminable meeting: action does not come again until the coda. There is a double-killing in "Mutation" but it is barely registered, subservient to what turns out to be not a science fiction story at all but a Theosophical fairy tale.
Only "Those Men From Mars" sustains any sense of suspense throughout. In addition to the Martian that landed at the White House, one landed at the Kremlin, Mars, it turns out, reached a unified consciousness 10,000 years ago, after its last great war, but is also running out of resources, and so has come to the earth to settle as immigrants. Each of the Martians is promised help by their respective hosts, if only they make available their wonderful technology--a kind of impermeable shield, which can nonetheless issue bullets or bombs--and, to their surprise, the Martians oppose one another: they are infected by Earth's politics. And so they fight. One dies, one wins--and goes home to bring back other Martians. The problem for earth is, No one knows which of the Martians won. And so earthlings wait on the heavens to deliver their fate: will the Russians or Americans conquer the world. The story ends without resolution.
But even this, the best of the lot, is undermined by Carr's sexual hangups. For him, women are great symbols of purity and love--but not real people. And the domestic impetus in the stories sits jarringly with the galactic themes.
So, in the first story, even as the perfect couple lunches into space--they seem to be a kind of Martin and Osa Johnson--the detective falls in love with the daughter of the man who hired him, and that becomes the main concern of the story. The love affair, though, is completely unbelievable, built upon ridiculous flirting and nothing else. "Morning Star" turns out to be adolescent male fantasy: the Venusian woman has come to earth to redirect exploration from Mars to Venus. Because Venus has evolved such that the male of the species are just dust motes, the females beautiful women--and they want to have sex with real men, with earthmen. The guard is the first man to go, and comes back to recruit more men.
Even "Those Men From Mars" is hurt by the same juvenile temptation. The white house correspondent and his love travel with the president following the course of the Martians, trying to find out what happened in the fight--but all they really care about is finding a small weekly newspaper he can run, while she--she who had spoken to aliens--settles down to become a housewife. That they do so in Carr's own hometown of Ashley, Ohio, speaks to the strong pull of these domestic scenes for him.
Unfortunately, they don't do as much for the modern reader.
So, confront this book like much pulp science fiction--even though this was slick--find joy in some of the writing, get intrigued by some of the ideas, but expect to be disappointed.
This book collects three novellas and one short story by Robert Spencer Carr; two of the novellas were published in The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s, fulfilling science fiction's long-hoped wish to break into the slicks and respectability. All four share the same strengths and weaknesses.
Carr could turn a phrase, and the first three stories start out promising. Check out the first paragraphs of the titular novella, first printed here:
"It made him feel like a beachcomber, to stroll back to his office after a long, late, leisurely lunch, wondering what rare and curious new business maters the tides int he affairs of men had cast upon the small shore of his desk in the hours he had been gone.
"He rode up in the elevator full of warm well-being, sirloin steak, and an affable readiness to be entertained. Perhaps the murmuring gray city had washed up a pearl, or fragrant ambergris, among the driftwood of the day. There might even be some money in the afternoon mail, he thought hopefully, and smiled."
Or this neat little bit from "Morning Star," the story that launched him into the SATEVEPOST:
"For this is what makes man divine. Not his animal nature, but the spiritual bravery to believe in a miracle when he sees one. The sheep, that night in Bethlehem, merely bleated at the Star. It took three wise men to follow it, to hope, to find."
These lines nicely set up the spiritual aspects the underwrote the space race. Which is one of Carr's themes. And they also came from early in the story--which points up one of his weaknesses.
Carr starts with interesting premises, and the language is precise. "Beyond Infinity" is about a detective who only searches for missing people--murder was too commonplace, disappearances had something uncanny about them. "Morning Star" has a security guard preparing for the meeting of the most profound scientific minds in the world to discuss some problem. "Those Men From Mars" (aka The Easter Eggs) has a strange craft landing at the White House. Only "Mutation"-the short story, and the weakest piece in the collection--starts slowly, with a man fishing and reading a burned copy of the Bible.
The tone in the first three is knowing, subtly or not telling the story from some future, which the writer assumes the reader shares; the point of view character is one who has reason to be at the center of action--a hired detective, the security guard, friend of a white house correspondent--but is otherwise a fairly minor presence: not the two competing astronomer who join forces in the dotage, not one of the scientific geniuses, or the strange women who breaks into their meeting, not the president, the correspondent, or his lady-love, the secretary who becomes the only one capable of communicating with the Martian that has come to the white house. Again, only the last story is the exception, with the protagonist the father of some horrid mutant.
This early precision of language and intensity of story, though, soon peters out in all but "Those Men From Mars." There is a setting, excitement--then mostly talk, talk, talk. The detective finds the missing couple all too easily, and then awaits as they are sent into space--against the law!--only to return seventeen minutes later but, thanks to relativity--younger when they left though they had seen much of the solar system. (There is a limp gesture at the end that they had not seen enough, that it might still be some kind of hoax). The four great scientific brains meet, but then they are bowled over too easily by the Venusian who has snuck into their meeting--an interminable meeting: action does not come again until the coda. There is a double-killing in "Mutation" but it is barely registered, subservient to what turns out to be not a science fiction story at all but a Theosophical fairy tale.
Only "Those Men From Mars" sustains any sense of suspense throughout. In addition to the Martian that landed at the White House, one landed at the Kremlin, Mars, it turns out, reached a unified consciousness 10,000 years ago, after its last great war, but is also running out of resources, and so has come to the earth to settle as immigrants. Each of the Martians is promised help by their respective hosts, if only they make available their wonderful technology--a kind of impermeable shield, which can nonetheless issue bullets or bombs--and, to their surprise, the Martians oppose one another: they are infected by Earth's politics. And so they fight. One dies, one wins--and goes home to bring back other Martians. The problem for earth is, No one knows which of the Martians won. And so earthlings wait on the heavens to deliver their fate: will the Russians or Americans conquer the world. The story ends without resolution.
But even this, the best of the lot, is undermined by Carr's sexual hangups. For him, women are great symbols of purity and love--but not real people. And the domestic impetus in the stories sits jarringly with the galactic themes.
So, in the first story, even as the perfect couple lunches into space--they seem to be a kind of Martin and Osa Johnson--the detective falls in love with the daughter of the man who hired him, and that becomes the main concern of the story. The love affair, though, is completely unbelievable, built upon ridiculous flirting and nothing else. "Morning Star" turns out to be adolescent male fantasy: the Venusian woman has come to earth to redirect exploration from Mars to Venus. Because Venus has evolved such that the male of the species are just dust motes, the females beautiful women--and they want to have sex with real men, with earthmen. The guard is the first man to go, and comes back to recruit more men.
Even "Those Men From Mars" is hurt by the same juvenile temptation. The white house correspondent and his love travel with the president following the course of the Martians, trying to find out what happened in the fight--but all they really care about is finding a small weekly newspaper he can run, while she--she who had spoken to aliens--settles down to become a housewife. That they do so in Carr's own hometown of Ashley, Ohio, speaks to the strong pull of these domestic scenes for him.
Unfortunately, they don't do as much for the modern reader.
So, confront this book like much pulp science fiction--even though this was slick--find joy in some of the writing, get intrigued by some of the ideas, but expect to be disappointed.
August 8, 2024
Read the book, did not do audiobook this time.
Man, this stunk. There are three short stories contained in this book and I never even made it to the end of the third one because it just got so bad.
I think the book is to a certain extent the product of its time. The writing style often feels like the narration to old news reel footage from the 1940's, which is when the stories were written.
The first story concerns a detective who is hired to find the old friend of a scientist. The person who contacts the detective is a fast talking woman (was never actually referred to as a "dame" but the implication was there) who was the niece of someone. . . I think. Of course, by the end of the book, the detective and woman are madly in love and oh by the way, you actually get some sci-fi at the end but it is of a very dated nature/theory; a concept that my dad used to talk about when I was a kid and no one even pretends could happen in modern sci-fi.
The second story was about a trip to Mars that was upended by a visit by a beautiful and mysterious woman, and once again, the main character macho man and she fall madly in love by the end of the story.
The third story involves a pair of Martian craft landing on earth, one on the White House lawn and one on the Kremlin grounds. It starts out cute enough but quickly slides into the jingoistic rhetoric of the era. I think even for the era, this would have felt pretty sophomoric at the time.
The stories are full of macho men and beautiful women who vacillate between being smart and strong and week and needy, relying on their macho men to make things right in the end. There is a fair amount of flag waving and a constant peppering of subtle and not so subtle religious references.
I think the reason I didn't give this a one star rating is that the stories always seemed to have potential, but they kept running up against the writer's limitations. There is nothing really interesting or predictively insightful in these stories from the 1940's.
I tried to give the story the benefit of the doubt and assume that the morays of the time held the author back, but I just checked and Asimov's "The Sands of Mars" was written just a few years after this and has none of the backwards corniness that this book displayed.
Man, this stunk. There are three short stories contained in this book and I never even made it to the end of the third one because it just got so bad.
I think the book is to a certain extent the product of its time. The writing style often feels like the narration to old news reel footage from the 1940's, which is when the stories were written.
The first story concerns a detective who is hired to find the old friend of a scientist. The person who contacts the detective is a fast talking woman (was never actually referred to as a "dame" but the implication was there) who was the niece of someone. . . I think. Of course, by the end of the book, the detective and woman are madly in love and oh by the way, you actually get some sci-fi at the end but it is of a very dated nature/theory; a concept that my dad used to talk about when I was a kid and no one even pretends could happen in modern sci-fi.
The second story was about a trip to Mars that was upended by a visit by a beautiful and mysterious woman, and once again, the main character macho man and she fall madly in love by the end of the story.
The third story involves a pair of Martian craft landing on earth, one on the White House lawn and one on the Kremlin grounds. It starts out cute enough but quickly slides into the jingoistic rhetoric of the era. I think even for the era, this would have felt pretty sophomoric at the time.
The stories are full of macho men and beautiful women who vacillate between being smart and strong and week and needy, relying on their macho men to make things right in the end. There is a fair amount of flag waving and a constant peppering of subtle and not so subtle religious references.
I think the reason I didn't give this a one star rating is that the stories always seemed to have potential, but they kept running up against the writer's limitations. There is nothing really interesting or predictively insightful in these stories from the 1940's.
I tried to give the story the benefit of the doubt and assume that the morays of the time held the author back, but I just checked and Asimov's "The Sands of Mars" was written just a few years after this and has none of the backwards corniness that this book displayed.
June 17, 2019
This is a collection of novellas by Mr. Carr. I read only the title story, so far, and it's above average for pulp fiction. However, it doesn't seem to aspire to much more. It starts out as a detective story (a search for a missing person), but gradually morphs into a science fiction romance about a couple who disappear and turn out to be involved in a top-secret and private space exploration venture staged somewhere near Los Alamos, New Mexico.
The story involves faster-than-light travel, which is used as a "fountain of youth" and an opportunity for self-exploration rather than epic conquest. So it was rather touching, in a humanistic (if not somewhat corny) way.
I recently purchased a set of Fantasy Press books, and this one was by an author with whom I was not familiar. So I thought I'd give it a try. Great dust jacket by Hannes Bok! (I'll have to upload a scan, since it doesn't seem to have been done here on goodreads.)
The story involves faster-than-light travel, which is used as a "fountain of youth" and an opportunity for self-exploration rather than epic conquest. So it was rather touching, in a humanistic (if not somewhat corny) way.
I recently purchased a set of Fantasy Press books, and this one was by an author with whom I was not familiar. So I thought I'd give it a try. Great dust jacket by Hannes Bok! (I'll have to upload a scan, since it doesn't seem to have been done here on goodreads.)
October 31, 2014
Beyond Infinity is a collection of four novellas. The back of the book had good blurbs so I'll just list comments after their titles:
'Beyond Infinity'
Reasonably interesting, very 1940s.
'Morning Star'
Sexist and dumb.
'Those Men From Mars'
Sexist and silly.
'Mutation'
Didn't like it. First child wouldn't have 'reverted' to an apish behavior he had never had exposure to, and his parents would have taught him better (easily!). And the mutant child & people were too strange a story... like nuclear winter was the chrysalis for a new and better form of humanity? And they're perfect angels? Far-fetched (beyond my capacity even in dated speculative fiction).
An interesting side-note in my reading experience: my copy of the book was missing the first 4 pages of the third story, 'Those Men From Mars'. I was able to find the original publication of the story, then titled 'Nightmare at Dawn', in a 1949 edition of the Saturday Evening Post, which I could digitally access for free (legally too!) through my public library account. My library card barcode was my username, and a PIN number I have associated with it worked as the password, and I was then able to download a 12 page pdf of the magazine! I read the majority of both versions, the book version was significantly rewritten and continued past the magazine's ending. I think I preferred the book version to the magazine, but it still had the same dated shortcomings (sexist and silly). (Silly like 'Mars Attacks' and/or little-green-men silly).
Not recommended unless you're interested in 1940s writing.
'Beyond Infinity'
Reasonably interesting, very 1940s.
'Morning Star'
Sexist and dumb.
'Those Men From Mars'
Sexist and silly.
'Mutation'
Didn't like it. First child wouldn't have 'reverted' to an apish behavior he had never had exposure to, and his parents would have taught him better (easily!). And the mutant child & people were too strange a story... like nuclear winter was the chrysalis for a new and better form of humanity? And they're perfect angels? Far-fetched (beyond my capacity even in dated speculative fiction).
An interesting side-note in my reading experience: my copy of the book was missing the first 4 pages of the third story, 'Those Men From Mars'. I was able to find the original publication of the story, then titled 'Nightmare at Dawn', in a 1949 edition of the Saturday Evening Post, which I could digitally access for free (legally too!) through my public library account. My library card barcode was my username, and a PIN number I have associated with it worked as the password, and I was then able to download a 12 page pdf of the magazine! I read the majority of both versions, the book version was significantly rewritten and continued past the magazine's ending. I think I preferred the book version to the magazine, but it still had the same dated shortcomings (sexist and silly). (Silly like 'Mars Attacks' and/or little-green-men silly).
Not recommended unless you're interested in 1940s writing.
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