“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.

"Shall the Dust Praise Thee?" (1967)

Once again, with Damon Knight's contribution to the Dangerous Visions collection, we find a generally incompetent monotheistic God at the center of things, and once again I am put in mind of the 1966 Time magazine cover, "Is God Dead?" It may be too easy to speculate it made such an impression on editor Harlan Ellison and/or these writers. But a feeble and useless if not dead God does seem to be one certain epitome of a dangerous vision here, as it occurs more than once. Maybe it's even true enough, per existentialist thought and so on. Then there is the matter of Ellison's introduction to the story, which is weird. It gave me the impression Ellison didn't care much for Knight at the time, though he tries to pass it off as a joke. In turn, Knight's clipped afterword seems to confirm a strained relationship. The story itself is very short, about five pages. God and a posse of angels have returned to Earth for Judgment Day, but no one is home. Nuclear war seems the likely reason. Upon looking around for answers, God finds a sardonic message etched into a stone by those about to pass: "WE WERE HERE. WHERE WERE YOU?" So it goes in the worlds of faith and faithlessness, and I'm sure I don't know what it has to do with science fiction, dangerous or otherwise. You're better off contemplating that cover of Time as far as I'm concerned. Knight's afterword, though very short, sounds familiar themes of the aggrieved science fiction writer—well, maybe more generally all writers. When he first wrote the story and tried to publish it via his agent, Knight writes, "my then agent returned it with loathing, and told me I might possibly send it to the Atheist Journal in Moscow." Ba-da-boom—Cold War times, Cold War times. I don't like the story that much either, but more because it feels kind of lazy. I'm not averse to this preoccupation with religion in self-consciously controversial work (which is maybe all that "dangerous" means after all), just surprised that it was where so many science fiction writers would think to go in 1967. I want to think it's the influence of Ellison, but then his story was not focused on religion at all. I'm telling you, it's that Time cover.

Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison