The Complete Dangerous Visions Page 14

  “And does it act as a deterrent?”

  “If it didn’t, we couldn’t use it. We have a provision, you know, in the Inter-American Union, against ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’ This is no longer unusual, and our Supreme Court and the Appeals Court of the Terrestrial Regions have both ruled that it is not cruel. It is therapeutic.”

  “I meant deterrent to other would-be criminals on the outside.”

  “All I can say is that every secondary school in the Union includes a course in elementary penology, with a dozen screen-viewings of this procedure. We’ve had a lot of publicity. I’ve been interviewed often. And out of two thousand inmates of this institution, which is of average size, those five are the only present subjects for this treatment. Our homicide rate in this Union has gone down from the highest to the lowest on Earth in the ten years since we began.”

  “Ah, yes, I was aware of that, of course. It is why I was delegated to investigate, to see whether it might be desirable for us too. I understand I am only the latest of such visitors.”

  “Quite true. The East Asian Union is considering it now, and several other Unions are hoping to put it on their agenda.”

  “But in the other sense of deterrence, as it affects the people themselves? How does that work out? Of course I know they couldn’t continue their criminal careers at present, but what is the psychological effect on them here and now?”

  “The principle,” said the warden, “was defined by Lachim Malley, our noted penologist—”

  “Indeed yes, one of the very great.”

  “We think so. His idea came originally from a very minor and banal bit of folk history. Back in the old days, when they had privately owned stores and people were paid wages to work in them, it used to be the custom, in shops that sold pastries and confectionery and such delicacies, which the young particularly crave—and also, I believe, in breweries and wineries—to allow new employees to eat or drink their fill. It was found that soon they became satiated, and then actually averse to the very thing they had so much craved—which of course saved a good deal of money in the long run.

  “It occurred to Malley that if an atrocious criminal should be obliged to relive constantly the episode which led to his incarceration—have it stuffed into him daily, so to speak, the incessant repetition would have a similar effect on him. Since we can now activate any part of the brain painlessly by electric probes in exact areas, the experiment was feasible. We here in this prison were the first to put it into practice.”

  “And does it so affect them?”

  “At first some of the most vicious—that mass cannibal you saw, or the child molester, for example—seem actually to revel in the reliving of their crimes. The less deteriorated dread and shrink from it from the beginning. And even the worst—those two are only at the beginning of their terms—gradually become first bored, then sated, and eventually, in time, completely alienated from their former impulses. Terribly remorseful, too, some of them; I’ve had hardened criminals get down on their knees and beg me to let them forget. But of course I can’t.”

  “And after they have served their time? For I suppose, as in our Union, a life sentence really means not more than fifteen years.”

  “About twelve, with us, on the average. But some of these—that last case, for instance—can never be safely released. They become reconciled, on the whole. For, apart from that daily ordeal, their lives aren’t bad here. They live comfortably, they have every opportunity for education and recreation, where possible we arrange for conjugal visits, and many of them pursue useful careers as if they were not imprisoned.”

  “But what of those who are freed? Have any of them reverted to crime? Have you had any recidivists among them?”

  The warden looked embarrassed.

  “No, we’ve never had any subject of the Malley System come back here,” he said reluctantly. “In fact, I feel it my duty to tell you that there is one slight disadvantage in the System.

  “So far, we’ve never had one subject who could be released to the general community when his term was over. Every one of them up to now has had to be transferred instead to a mental hospital.”

  The African criminologist was silent. Then his eyes strayed around the office in which he sat. For the first time he noticed the armor-plated walls, the shatterproof glass, the electronic weapons trained on the door and ready to be activated by pressure on a button on the warden’s desk.

  The warden followed his glance, and flushed.

  “I’m afraid I’m just chicken,” he said defensively. “Actually, the subjects are kept under strict surveillance and the roboguards have orders to shoot to kill. But I keep remembering my predecessor’s experience, when he and Lachim Malley—”

  “I know, naturally,” said the African, “that Malley died suddenly while he was visiting this prison. A heart attack, I understand.”

  “My predecessor was a little too careless,” remarked the warden with a grim smile. “He had complete faith in Malley’s System, and he didn’t even have roboguards to back up the techs, or have the subjects frisked for shivs before their daily recapitulation. There were more subjects then, too—at least fourteen that day. So when they simultaneously overpowered the techs, with the probes already in place, and broke for this office—

  “Oh yes, Malley died of a heart attack. So did my predecessor. Right through the heart, in both cases.”

  Afterword

  Since fact crime and mystery shorts make up a major part of my writing, it is natural that even in science fiction the subject should appeal to me. This particular extrapolation came to me suddenly out of the blue, as much of my science fiction does. Murders are committed by people in a highly emotional state, even if the emotion is only rabid thrill-seeking; and that being so, what worse punishment could be inflicted than to force a repetition of the experience until the murderer is either wildly remorseful or (as seems more likely, and as I indicated) reduced to complete psychic breakdown.

  Granted that mankind has a future, and that we somehow catch up socially and psychologically with our technical achievements, some such penological gambit might well suggest itself to future criminologists. Whether it would be any more of a deterrent to others than the chance of execution is today, is another question. And despite my disclaimer, I am not at all sure that the highest court of appeals of the time would not decide that the punishment was even crueler than the crime.

  A TOY FOR JULIETTE

  Robert Bloch

  Introduction

  What follows is, in the purest sense, the end-result of literary feedback. Recently the story editor of a prime-time television series, pressed for a script to shoot, sat down and wrote one himself rather than wait for the vagaries of a freelance scenarist’s schedule and dalliance. When he had completed the script, which was to go before the cameras in a matter of days, he sent it as a matter of form to the legal department of the studio. For the clearance of names, etc. Later that day the legal department called him back in a frenzy. Almost scene-for-scene and word-for-word (including the title), the non-s-f story editor had copied a well-known science fiction short story. When it was pointed out to him, the story editor blanched and recalled he had indeed read that story, some fifteen years before. Hurriedly, the story rights were purchased from the well-known fantasy writers who had originally conceived the idea. I hasten to add that I accept the veracity of the story editor when he swears he had no conscious knowledge of imitating the story. I believe him because this sort of unconscious plagiarism is commonplace in the world of the writer. It is inevitable that much of the mass of reading a writer does will stick with him somehow, in vague concepts, snatches of scenes, snippets of characterization, and it will turn up later, in the writer’s own work; altered, transmogrified, but still a direct result of another writer’s work. It is by no means “plagiarism”. It is part of the answer to the question asked by idiots of authors at cocktail parties: “Where do you get your ideas?”

  Poul Ande
rson dropped me a note several months ago explaining that he had just written a story he was about to send out to market when he realized it paralleled the theme of a story he had read at a writers’ conference we had both attended, just a month or so before. He added that his story was only vaguely similar to mine, but he wanted to apprise me to the resemblance so there would be no question later. It was a rhetorical letter: I’m arrogant, but not arrogant enough to think Poul Anderson needs to crib from me. Similarly, at the World Science Fiction Convention held last year in Cleveland, the well-known German fan Tom Schlück and I were introduced. (Tom had been brought over by the fans as Fan Guest of Honor, an exchange tradition in fandom perpetuated by the TransAtlantic Fan Fund.) The first thing he did after we shook hands was to hand me a German science fiction paperback. I had some difficulty understanding why he had given me the gift. Tom opened the book—a collection of stories pseudonymously written by top German s-f fan-pro Walter Ernsting. The flyleaf said: “To Harlan Ellison with thanks and compliments.” I still didn’t understand. Then Tom turned to the first story, which was titled “Die Sonnenbombe”. Under the title it said: (Nach einer Idee von Harlan Ellison). I wrinkled my brow. I still didn’t understand. I recognized my own name, which looks the same in all languages save Russian, Chinese, Hebrew or Sanskrit, but I don’t read German, and I’m afraid I stood there like a clot. Tom explained that the basic idea of a story I had written in 1957—”Run for the Stars”—had inspired Ernsting to write “Die Sonnenbombe”. It was the literary feedback, halfway across the world. I was deeply touched, and even more, it was a feeling of justification. Every writer save the meanest hack hopes his words will live after he goes down the hole, that his thoughts will influence people. It isn’t the primary purpose of the writing, of course, but it’s the sort of secret wish that parallels the Average Man having babies, so his name doesn’t die with him. And here, in my hands, was the visible proof that something my mind had conjured up had reached out and ensnared another man’s imagination. It was obviously the sincerest form of flattery. And by no means “plagiarism”. It was the literary feedback. The instances of this action-reaction among writers are numberless, and some of them are legend. It is the reason for writers’ seminars, workshops, conferences and the endless exchange of letters among writers. What has all of this—or any of it—to do with Robert Bloch, the author of the story that follows? Everything.

  In 1943 Robert Bloch had published a story titled “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”. The number of times it has been reprinted, anthologized, translated into radio and TV scripts, and most of all plagiarized, are staggering. I read it in 1953, and the story stuck with me always. When I heard its dramatization on the Molle Mystery Theater, it became a recurring favorite memory. The story idea was simply that Jack the Ripper, by killing at specific times, made his peace with the dark gods and was thus allowed to live forever. Jack was immortal, and Bloch traced with cold methodical logic a trail of similar Ripper-style murders in almost every major city of the world, over a period of fifty or sixty years. The concept of Jack—who was never apprehended—living on, from era to era, caught my imagination. When it came time to put this anthology together, I called Robert Bloch and suggested that if Jack were, in fact, immortal, why then he would have to go on into the future. The image of a creature of Whitechapel fog and filth, the dark figure of Leather Apron, skulking through a sterile and automated city of the future, was an anachronism that fascinated me. Bob agreed, and said he would set to work at once. When his story came in, it was (pardon the word) a delight, and I bought it at once. But the concept of Jack in the future would not release my thoughts. I dwelled on it with almost morbid fascination. Finally I asked Bob if he minded my doing a story for this book that took up where his left off. He said he thought it would be all right. It was, as I’ve said, in the purest sense, the act of literary feedback. And again, the sincerest form of flattery. Bloch had literally triggered the creative process in another writer.

  The story that follows Robert Bloch’s story is the product of that feedback. Mr. Bloch has kindly and graciously agreed to write the introduction to my story, in an effort to gain revenge for the introduction to his story. Tied in a knot, the two introductions, the two stories and the two afterword: seem to have melded into a unified whole that demonstrate; more admirably than any million words of literary critique; what it is that one writer obtains from another.

  What this particular editor has obtained from that particular writer named Robert Bloch is far more than a story idea. I first saw Bloch—tall, debonair, sharp-featured, bespectacled, smoking through a long cigarette holder reminiscent of Eric von Stroheim—at the Midwest Science Fiction Convention at Beatley’s-on-the-Lake Hotel in Belle-fontaine, Ohio, in 1951. I was almost eighteen. I was obnoxious, wide-eyed and hungry to know all there was about science fiction. Bloch was at that time, and had been for many years, a living legend. Even though a recognized professional with many books and stories to his credit, he had always made himself available to even the grubbiest fan anxious to cadge a story or article for some half-legible fan magazines. Gratis, of course. He was the perennial toast-master, his wit a combination of cornball and cutlass-incisive. He knew everyone, and everyone knew him. Up to this pillar of fantasy walked the snot Ellison.

  I do not recall what happened on that occasion, the mists of time and the ravages of senility having already reached me at age thirty-three, but it must have been memorable, because someone took our photograph, and I still have a copy: myself looking smug as a potato bug and Bloch staring down on me with a peculiar expression that says benevolence, toleration, amused confusion and stark terror. I have been privileged to call myself a friend of Robert Bloch’s since that time.

  One more small anecdote, then I’ll let Bloch speak for himself on the subjects of his career, his childhood and the nature of violence. When I arrived in Hollywood in 1962, literally without a dollar in my pocket (I had ten cents, a wife, a son, and we had been so broke driving cross-country we had only eaten the contents of a box of pecan pralines for the last three hundred miles), in a battered 1951 Ford, Robert Bloch—who was not all that well off himself—loaned me enough money to get a place to stay and food to eat. He waited three years to be repaid, and never once asked for the considerable sum. He is one of God’s Good People, as anyone who has ever come anywhere near him can attest. It is one of the giant dichotomies of our times that a man as gentle, amusing, empathic and peaceful as Bloch can write the gruesome and warped stories he produces with alarming regularity. One can only offer by way of amelioration Sturgeon’s lament that after he had written one—and one only—story about homosexuality, everyone accused him of being a fag. Bloch is an entity quite apart and diametrically opposite from the horrors he sets on paper. (I might suggest the reader remember this writer’s lament when he comes to the story after Bloch’s.)

  And now, beaming with memorabilia and bonhomie, here is Bloch:

  “As a small child I skipped several grades of grammar school, thus finding myself in the company of older and bigger youngsters who introduced me to the savage jungle of the playground, with its secret pecking order and ceaseless torment of the weak by the strong. Fortunately for myself, I never became a physical victim nor was I an over-compensating bully; in some strange fashion I found that I was able to lead my companions into various intricate imaginative games as a substitute activity. We dug trenches in the back yard and played war; the open front porch became a deck of a pirate ship and captured victims walked the plank (a leaf from the dining-room table) to jump off into the ocean of the front lawn. But I dimly recognized that the shows and circuses I devised didn’t hold the interest of my playmates nearly as well as the games which were surrogates for violence. And later on, as they were inevitably lured towards the venerated violences of boxing, wrestling, football and other adult-approved outlets for outrage on the human person, I retreated to reading, sketching, drama and the enjoyment of the theater and motion pictures.


  “The silent version of The Phantom of the Opera scared the daylights out of me as an eight-year-old, but a part of me was objective enough to find a fascination in this demonstration of the power of make-believe. I began to read widely in the field of imaginary violence. When, at the age of fifteen, I began corresponding with the fantasy writer. H. P. Lovecraft, he encouraged me to try my own at writing. As a high school comic I’d discovered that I could make audiences laugh: now I began to realize that I could move them emotionally in other directions.

  “At seventeen, I sold my first story to Weird Tales magazine and thus found a lifelong vocation. Since then I’ve made magazine appearances with upwards of four hundred short stories, articles and novelettes. I’ve conducted magazine columns, seen stories reprinted in close to a hundred anthologies here and abroad; twenty-five books, novels and short-story collections have been published. In addition, I’ve ghost-written for politicians and spent a term writing almost every conceivable variety of advertising copy. I adapted thirty-nine of my own stories for a radio series, and in recent years have concentrated largely on scripts for television and motion pictures.

  “In the beginning my work was almost entirely in the field of fantasy, where the violent element was openly and obviously a product of imagination. The mass violence of World War II caused me to examine violence at its source—on the individual level. Still unwilling or unable to cope with its present reality, I retreated into history and re-created, as a prototype of apparently senseless violence, the infamously famous mass murderer who styled himself ‘Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper’. This short story was to see endless reprint and anthologization, plus frequent dramatizing on radio, and finally appeared on television; at latest report it popped up as a dramatic reading in Israel. For some reason the notion of Jack the Ripper’s survival in the present day touched a sensitive spot in the audience psyche.