WHO RHYMES THERE?
(who also drew the cartoon)
And now, “Who Goes There?” once more with feeling . . . some kind of feeling, anyway.
Gordon Randall Garrett (1927-1987), was an ebullient and frequently hilarious writer (in person and on paper) who often wrote as Randall Garrett, but also under a multitude of pseudonyms, sometimes using his father’s names—David and Phillip—in constructing them. Mark Cole has a nifty biographical and bibliographical sketch of Garrett and his diverse works online, and laments a number of forgotten writers of yesteryear: “. . . how many still remember the marvelous stories written by such authors as David Gordon, Ivar Jorgensen, Jonathan Blake MacKenzie, Leonard G. Spencer, Gordon Aghill, Richard Green and Darrell T. Langart? Mind you, they might be a little easier to remember if we knew that they all happened to be one man, one brilliant if nearly forgotten writer named Randall Garrett.” Well played, Mr. Cole, even if I have to quibble that “Ivar Jorgensen” (sometimes “Jorgenson”) was a house name, used by more writers than Mr. Garrett. That list of pseudonyms above, incidentall, does not include “Robert Randall,” used for his many collaborations with Robert Silverberg in the 1950s. Thanks to all those pseudonyms, a full accounting of his work is probably Not possible. (Cole mentions 22 novels and 130 short stories.
His first published story, “The Absence of Heat,” appeared in Astounding’s “Probability Zero” department (which specialized in in short-short joke stories) in 1944 when he was only 16. Other bibliographies list “The Waiting Game,” in 1951, as his first published story. Garrett is probably best remembered for his Lord Darcy series, about a detective in a parallel world where magic works and is used in criminology as our world uses forensic science. Of his collaborations, I am inordinately fond of the three hilarious novels he did with Laurence M. Janifer (as by “Mark Phillips”) about a hapless FBI agent named Kenneth H. Manlone, who has to deal with crimes committed by telepaths, teleporters, and other psi-powered miscreants, the first of which (That Sweet Little Old Lady in Astorunding, later in paperback as Brain Twister) was nominated for the Hugo Award. His last work was also a collaboration, this time with his wife, Vicki Ann Heydron: seven novels of sword-and-sorcery mystery, known collectively as The Gandalara Cycle.
Unfortunately (to put it far too mildly), Garrett contracted a brain infection which ended his writing and, later, his life. But he left us a substantial body of work, some of which is online as books, e-books and audiobooks, and which is highly recommended. Also recommended is Mark Cole’s splendid essay about Garrett, “The Clown Prince of Science Fiction,” which can be found at http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10578.
Here’s a tale of chilling horror
For the sort of guy who more or
Less thinks being an explorer
Is the kind of life for him.
If he finds his life a bore, he
Ought to read this gory story,
For he’ll find exploratory
Work is really rather grim.
For the story starts by stating
That some guys investigating
The Antarctic are debating
On exactly what to do
With a monster they’ve found frozen
Near the campsite they have chosen,
And the quarrel grows and grows, un-
’Til they’re in an awful stew.
There’s a guy named Blair who wants to r-
Eally check up on this monster
And dissect it. To his conster-
Nation, everyone’s in doubt.
So, of course, he starts in pleading,
And the rest of them start heeding
All his statements, and conceding
That the Thing should be thawed out.
So they let this Thing of evil
Start to melt from its primeval
Sheath of ice: they don’t perceive a l-
Ot of trouble will ensue.
When the Thing is thawed, it neatly
Comes to life, and, smiling sweetly,
It absorbs some men completely,
Changing them to monsters, too!
Now we reach the story’s nub, ill-
Uminating all the trouble:
Each new monster is a double
For the men they each replace.
Since it seems a man’s own mother
Couldn’t tell one from the other,
The guys all watch one another,
Each with fear upon his face.
And so then the men are tested
To see who has been digested,
And who’s been left unmolested,
But the test doesn’t work! It’s hexed!
So each man just sits there, shrinking
From the others, madly thinking,
As he watches with unblinking
Gaze, and wonders—Who Goes Next?
Now, they’ve found that executing
Monsters can’t be done by shooting:
They require electrocuting,
Or cremation with a torch.
When they find these Things, they grab ’em;
They don’t try to shoot or stab ’em;
With high-voltage wires, they jab ‘em’
’Til their flesh begins to scorch.
So the entire expedition
Eye each other with suspicion,
For they’re in a bad position,
And there’s no denying that!
Now, to clear this awful scramble,
The ingenious Mr. Campbell,
Suddenly without preamble,
Pulls a rabbit from the hat.
Here’s the way they solve the muddle;
They discover that a puddle
Of a pseudo-human’s blood’ll
Be a little monster, too!
With this test for separating
Men from monsters, without waiting,
They start right in liquidating
All the monsters in the crew.
Thus, the story is completed,
And the awful Thing’s defeated,
But he still was badly treated;
It’s a shame, it seems to me.
Frozen since the glaciation,
This poor Thing’s extermination
Is as sad as the cremation
Of the hapless Sam McGee.
“Who Rhymes There?” was originally published with the title, “Parodies Tossed” in the May 1956 issue of Science Fiction Stories. It was reprinted with the title of “All About the Thing” in SF: The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy, Second Annual Volume edited by Judith Merrill, and published by Gnome Press (1957) and Dell (June 1957).