“Small World” (1957)

Among other things, this story by William F. Nolan is a good example of the blurring between horror and science fiction that was going on in the 1950s. It’s really a science fiction story—the premise involves an attack on Earth by aliens from outer space. It’s also very much in the realm of O. Henry or Maupassant with a calculated twist at the end custom-designed for shock, handwringing, and/or sad wisdom. Nolan is another prolific and well-decorated genre writer I don’t know that well. He wrote a lot of stories, but this one appears to be minor in the larger scheme of his work, which is perhaps capped by the 1967 novel Logan’s Run, a collaboration with George Clayton Johnson. This story may bear some similarities to that novel in that it features a character who is hiding and running around a lot, avoiding certain menace. Because its intention is to surprise, SPOILER warning now, as I’m about to give it away. The aliens killed everyone over the age of 6 and departed. This story takes place a few years after that. What our hero Lewis Stillman has spent the story avoiding is feral children. It’s not entirely original—Jerome Bixby’s “It’s a Good Life” has some of it and I suspect there are other examples. Are there 19th-century dystopias with feral children abroad on the land? Maybe. But it feels more to me like a midcentury science fiction natural. The setting is an abandoned Los Angeles, which suggests the scope nicely, even if the story gets a little too cluttered with street names. It takes a big bomb (or big alien technology in this case) to wreck a giant city like Los Angeles. Nolan is a pretty good writer, and the story works pretty well as suspense, but I have my nits. I thought the devotion of Lewis to Ernest Hemingway does not age this story well. Also: the original title was “The Small World of Lewis Stillman,” which I think by far the better title. The edited version is punchy, sure, but it always leads me to expect it’s going to be a story about coincidences. But, overall, really not bad. How did it get into an anthology so full of crap?

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.
Read story online (scroll down).
Listen to story online.