“Strangers on Paradise” (1986)

Noting that the more popular alternate title for this Damon Knight story is “Strangers in Paradise,” which ISFDB insists on. That’s fine but Knight himself preferred “on,” the way it shows up in the Masters of Darkness anthology edited by Dennis Etchison. In this anthology, Etchison gave writers free rein to pick one of their stories they felt never got the attention it deserved. As anthologies go, the results are perhaps predictably more on the dismal side, suggesting once again that writers may have little perspective on their own work. I mean, some of them are self-acknowledged trunk stories. Knight’s story is not bad as far as it goes, at least until the weak and cliched resolution. It’s the kind of story that doesn’t easily lend itself to a good resolution, but I think Knight could have done better. Another problem—though not as bad as I’ve seen it—is the attempt by the genre writer to do literary. The baggage around literary pretensions that can emerge is often terribly embarrassing. But that element is also at the heart of this story, making it difficult to write around. It’s about a literary scholar traveling to the planet Paradise to study the work of a poet who emigrated there. Quite an interesting place—there’s lots of SF stuff about the planet and space travel to get there that I enjoyed. And the mystery of the poet is also a very good element here. In the last 10 years of her life, we are told, she “went silent.” The story is an object lesson in the tragic foolishness of humans and their attempts, nearly as foolish, to learn lessons from experience. I mean, it’s all very easy and cynical, I know, but I’m feeling pretty glum myself about our prospects at the moment, so I shouldn’t fault Knight for taking the easy way out. What we’re talking about here is something along the lines of Charlton Heston pounding the sand at the end of Planet of the Apes, beholding the ruin of the Statue of Liberty. “Strangers on Paradise” is not quite as obvious—what could be?—but it’s pretty obvious. Still, it’s good enough that I’m thinking I’d like to read more of Knight down the road.

Masters of Darkness, ed. Dennis Etchison
Story not available online.