The Reel Stuff Read online

  The Reel Stuff

  edited by

  Brian Thomsen

  Martin H. Greenberg

  DAW Books, Inc.

  Donald A. Wollheim, Founder

  375 Hudson Street,

  New York, NY 10014

  Elizabeth R. Wollheim

  Sheila E. Gilbert

  Publishers

  www.dawbooks.com

  in cooperation with

  SEATTLE BOOK COMPANY

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  Copyright © 1998 by Brian Thomsen and Tekno Books

  All Rights Reserved.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1098.

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Microsoft LIT edition ISBN: 0-7420-9300-X

  Adobe PDF edition ISBN: 0-7420-9302-6

  Palm PDB edition ISBN: 0-7420-9303-4

  MobiPocket edition ISBN: 0-7420-9301-8

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  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  Electronic format made

  available by arrangement with

  DAW Books, Inc.

  www.dawbooks.com

  Elizabeth R. Wollheim

  Sheila E. Gilbert

  Publishers

  Palm Digital Media

  www.palm.com/ebooks

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  "The Reel Stuff: Equally Good Things That Are Not Quite Interchangeable" by Brian Thomsen. Copyright © 1998 by Brian Thomsen.

  "Mimic" by Donald A. Wollheim. Copyright © 1942, renewed 1970 by Donald A. Wollheim. Reprinted by permission of the Executrix for the author's Estate, Betsy Wollheim.

  "Second Variety" by Philip K. Dick. Copyright © 1953 by Galaxy Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of the agent for the author's Estate, Russ Galen.

  "Amanda and the Alien" by Robert Silverberg. Copyright © 1983 by Agberg, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the author and Agberg, Ltd.

  "Sandkings" by George R.R. Martin. Copyright © 1979 by Omni International, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick. Copyright © 1966 by Davis Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the agent for the author's Estate, Russ Galen.

  "Air Raid" by John Varley. Copyright © 1977 by Davis Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Ricia Mainhardt.

  "The Forbidden" by Clive Barker. Copyright © 1985 by Clive Barker. Reprinted by permission of the author and Little, Brown and Company.

  "Johnny Mnemonic" by William Gibson. Copyright © 1981 by Omni Publications. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Martha Millard.

  "Enemy Mine" by Barry Longyear. Copyright © 1980 by Barry Longyear. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Nightflyers" by George R.R. Martin. Copyright © 1980, 1981 by George R.R. Martin. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Herbert West: Reanimator" by H.P. Lovecraft. Copyright © 1922 by H.P. Lovecraft. Reprinted by permission of the agent for the author's Estate, JABberwocky Literary Agency, P.O. Box 4558, Sunnyside, NY 11104-0558.

  CONTENTS

  THE REEL STUFF

  by Brian Thomsen

  MIMIC

  by Donald A. Wollheim

  SECOND VARIETY

  by Philip K. Dick

  AMANDA AND THE ALIEN

  by Robert Silverberg

  SANDKINGS

  by George R. R. Martin

  WE CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE

  by Philip K. Dick

  AIR RAID

  by John Varley

  THE FORBIDDEN

  by Clive Barker

  JOHNNY MNEMONIC

  by William Gibson

  ENEMY MINE

  by Barry Longyear

  NIGHTFLYERS

  by George R. R. Martin

  HERBERT WEST: REANIMATOR

  by H. P. Lovecraft

  THE REEL STUFF:

  by Brian M. Thomsen

  Equally Good Things That Are Not Quite Interchangeable

  A friend of mine occasionally teaches a class at Hofstra and asked me if I would like to sit in as a guest participant on a few occasions. The subject was Science Fiction Writing with a secondary emphasis on film so I readily agreed to sit in on the session that was tentatively titled "When Bad Movies Happen to Good Stories." As per usual the class broke down into two distinct camps: those whose first introduction to the realm of the fantastic was through films and TV (they usually maintained that nothing can ever beat Star Trek, Star Wars, Alien, or the X Files, etc., and that the printed word is inferior to moving celluloid image), and the opposing camp whose first introduction was the printed word (usually Asimov, Heinlein, or Ellison) and usually maintained that no film/dramatic adaptation of a work of fantastic fiction has ever done justice to its source material. The discussion at hand had moved on to the latest offender/cinematic masterpiece Starship Troopers when my opinion was sought.

  "I loved the book and I loved the movie," I replied and proceeded to explain that they were two equally good things that were by no means equally interchangeable. True the book is dated and much more relevant to a reader who is politically in sync with Heinlein's views, and true the film begs for a sequel to finish telling the story covered by the book and is overly reliant on the technical wizardry that went into the giant bugs, but these are minor points. I enjoyed both.

  I've always been a movie buff and my first introduction to the world of adult paperback books was through movie and TV tie-ins. I remember Ted Sturgeon's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Asimov's Fantastic Voyage, Murray Leinster's Time Tunnel, Michael Avallone's Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and, of course, James Blish's Star Trek, and it was only years later that I realized that these were the adaptations based on the dramatic presentations, unlike Stevenson's Treasure Island and Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea which, obviously, preceded and inspired the motion pictures based on them. Therefore, I must now confess that my introduction to the literary genre of the fantastic was indeed not through Tom Swift or Heinlein juveniles but through movie tie-ins…

  (A hush comes over the crowd)

  …closely followed by excursions into similar non-movie related titles by the same authors (such as other work by Asimov, Clarke, etc.) which, of course, led to an appreciation of both mediums of expression.

  Unlike the purveyors of the written word, Hollywood is hampered by two things: its reliance on mass/popular appeal and the ever decreasing technological limits that are currently in place. The latter limitation is rapidly decreasing, as evidenced by the marvelous insect beings that we have seen in such films as Mimic and Starship Troopers and the cybernetic wonders of Screamers and Johnny Mnemonic, while the former is increasing in direct proportion (probably due to the financial expense of the latter). As a result some of the subtle, profound nuances of Dick's "Second Variety" and "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," Martin's "Nightflyers," and Longyear's "Enemy Mine" are lost in their cinematic translations in favor of the more traditional rock-em-sock-em-action approach that is rumored to sell more tickets.

  I like to be excited watching things blow up… but I always like to ponder the subtleties of a writer and his themes (once again, two mutually good things that are not quite interchangeable). I like the mystery of alien encounters as seen in "Sandkings" and "Amanda and the Alien," the threat of man being exterminated by his own creations as seen in
"Mimic" and "Second Variety," the allure of time travel as salvation as in "Air Raid," and the things that go bump in the night in "The Forbidden" and "Herbert West, ReAnimator"… and I know that other people do, too. At the same time, with the advent of the VCR, movies can be available twenty-four hours a day seven days a week at your slightest inclination in a manner that thirty years ago was only available via the printed word.

  True, movie-wise I may not be as discriminating as others, sometimes relishing bad movies more than good ones, but in the greater scheme of things that really doesn't matter (the convenience of at home viewing has taken away the necessary investment for a movie having to be really good to be worth my time)… what matters is that they always leave me wanting more, which, once again, usually leads me back to the authors from whence it all originally came.

  For some, like myself, THE REEL STUFF with its classic tales of the fantastic can be enjoyed as a walk down memory lane. Enjoy.

  For others, it may be a maiden voyage into the literary form of the fantastic genre which they may have previously only been exposed to via the screen. To them, I recommend that they make many side trips along the way (other stories by the authors herein or stories of similar subject matters by other authors). There is an extremely rewarding world out there on the printed page that has yet to make it to the silver screen.

  MIMIC

  by Donald A. Wollheim

  This story was the basis for the 1997 film Mimic, starring Mira Sorvino, Josh Brolin, F. Murray Abraham, and Charles S. Dutton, and directed by Guillermo Del Toro.

  It is less than five hundred years since an entire half of the world was discovered. It is less than two hundred years since the discovery of the last continent. The sciences of chemistry and physics go back scarce one century. The science of aviation goes back forty years. The science of atomics is being born.

  And yet we think we know a lot.

  We know little or nothing. Some of the most startling things are unknown to us. When they are discovered they may shock us to the bone.

  We search for secrets in the far islands of the Pacific and among the ice fields of the frozen North while under our very noses, rubbing shoulders with us every day, there may walk the undiscovered. It is a curious fact of nature that that which is in plain view is oft best hidden.

  I have always known of the man in the black cloak. Since I was a child he has always lived on my street, and his eccentricities are so familiar that they go unmentioned except among casual visitors. Here, in the heart of the largest city in the world, in swarming New York, the eccentric and the odd may flourish unhindered.

  As children we had hilarious fun jeering at the man in black when he displayed his fear of women. We watched, in our evil, childish way, for those moments; we tried to get him to show anger. But he ignored us completely, and soon we paid him no further heed, even as our parents did.

  We saw him only twice a day. Once in the early morning, when we would see his six-foot figure come out of the grimy dark hallway of the tenement at the end of the street and stride down toward the elevated to work— again when he came back at night. He was always dressed in a long black cloak that came to his ankles, and he wore a wide-brimmed black hat down far over his face. He was a sight from some weird story out of the old lands. But he harmed nobody, and paid attention to nobody.

  Nobody— except perhaps women.

  When a woman crossed his path, he would stop in his stride and come to a dead halt. We could see that he closed his eyes until she had passed. Then he would snap those wide watery blue eyes open and march on as if nothing had happened.

  He was never known to speak to a woman. He would buy some groceries maybe once a week, at Antonio's— but only when there were no other patrons there. Antonio said once that he never talked, he just pointed at things he wanted and paid for them in bills that he pulled out of a pocket somewhere under his cloak. Antonio did not like him, but he never had any trouble with him either.

  Now that I think of it, nobody ever did have any trouble with him.

  We got used to him. We grew up on the street; we saw him occasionally when he came home and went back into the dark hallway of the house he lived in.

  One of the kids on the block lived in that house too. A lot of families did. Antonio said they knew nothing much about him either, though there were one or two funny stories.

  He never had visitors, he never spoke to anyone. And he had once built something in his room out of metal.

  He had then, years ago, hauled up some long flat metal sheets, sheets of tin or iron, and they had heard a lot of hammering and banging in his room for several days. But that had stopped and that was all there was to that story.

  Where he worked I don't know and never found out. He had money, for he was reputed to pay his rent regularly when the janitor asked for it.

  Well, people like that inhabit big cities and nobody knows the story of their lives until they're all over. Or until something strange happens.

  * * *

  I grew up, I went to college, I studied. Finally I got a job assisting a museum curator. I spent my days mounting beetles and classifying exhibits of stuffed animals and preserved plants, and hundreds and hundreds of insects from all over.

  Nature is a strange thing, I learned. You learn that very clearly when you work in a museum. You realize how nature uses the art of camouflage. There are twig insects that look exactly like a leaf or a branch of a tree. Exactly. Even to having phony vein markings that look just like the real leaf's. You can't tell them apart, unless you look very carefully.

  Nature is strange and perfect that way. There is a moth in Central America that looks like a wasp. It even has a fake stinger made of hair, which it twists and curls just like a wasp's stinger. It has the same colorings and, even though its body is soft and not armored like a wasp's, it is colored to appear shiny and armored. It even flies in the daytime when wasps do, and not at night like all the other moths. It moves like a wasp. It knows somehow that it is helpless and that it can survive only by pretending to be as deadly to other insects as wasps are.

  I learned about army ants, and their strange imitators.

  Army ants travel in huge columns of thousands and hundreds of thousands. They move along in a flowing stream several yards across and they eat everything in their path. Everything in the jungle is afraid of them. Wasps, bees, snakes, other ants, birds, lizards, beetles— even men run away, or get eaten.

  But in the midst of the army ants there also travel many other creatures— creatures that aren't ants at all, and that the army ants would kill if they knew of them. But they don't know of them because these other creatures are disguised. Some of them are beetles that look like ants. They have false markings like ant-thoraxes and they run along in imitation of ant speed. There is even one that is so long it is marked like three ants in single file. It moves so fast that the real ants never give it a second glance.

  There are weak caterpillars that look like big armored beetles. There are all sorts of things that look like dangerous animals. Animals that are the killers and superior fighters of their groups have no enemies. The army ants and the wasps, the sharks, the hawk, and the felines. So there are a host of weak things that try to hide among them— to mimic them.

  And man is the greatest killer, the greatest hunter of them all. The whole world of nature knows man for the irresistible master. The roar of his gun, the cunning of his trap, the strength and agility of his arm place all else beneath him.

  * * *

  It was, as often happens to be the case, sheer luck that I happened to be on the street at that dawning hour when the janitor came running out of the tenement on my street shouting for help. I had been working all night mounting new exhibits.

  The policeman on the beat and I were the only people besides the janitor to see the things that we found in the two dingy rooms occupied by the stranger of the black cloak.

  The janitor explained— as the officer and I dashed up the narrow r
ickety stairs— that he had been awakened by the sound of heavy thuds and shrill screams in the stranger's rooms. He had gone out in the hallway to listen.

  Severe groaning as of someone in terrible pain— the noise of someone thrashing around in agony— was coming from behind the closed door of the stranger's apartment. The janitor had listened, then run for help.

  When we got there the place was silent. A faint light shone from under the doorway. The policeman knocked; there was no answer. He put his ear to the door and so did I.

  We heard a faint rustling— a continuous slow rustling as of a breeze blowing paper. The cop knocked again but there was still no response.

  Then, together, we threw our weight at the door. Two hard blows and the rotten old lock gave way. We burst in.

  The room was filthy, the floor covered with scraps of torn paper, bits of detritus and garbage. The room was unfurnished, which I thought was odd.

  In one corner there stood a metal box, about four feet square. A tight box, held together with screws and ropes. It had a lid, opening at the top, which was down and fastened with a sort of wax seal.

  The stranger of the black cloak lay in the middle of the floor— dead.

  He was still wearing the cloak. The big slouch hat was lying on the floor some distance away. From the inside of the box the faint rustling was coming.

  We turned over the stranger, took the cloak off. For several instants we saw nothing amiss—

  At first we saw a man, dressed in a somber, featureless black suit. He had a coat and skintight pants.

  His hair was short and curly brown. It stood straight up in its inch-long length. His eyes were open and staring. I noticed first that he had no eyebrows, only a curious dark line in the flesh over each eye.

  It was then that I realized that he had no nose. But no one had ever noticed that before. His skin was oddly mottled. Where the nose should have been there were dark shadowings that made the appearance of a nose, if you only just glanced at him. Like the work of a skillful artist in a painting.

  His mouth was as it should be, and slightly open— but he had no teeth. His head perched upon a thin neck.