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Introduction To

A DOCTOR ALIEN TRILOGY

STANLEY SCHMIDT


We’re often told that truth is stranger than fiction, and I usually think there’s a good deal of truth in that. Sometimes, when I’m reading Rajnar Vajra, I’m not so sure—and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Science fiction is about imagination, but rooted in science; and sometimes writers underestimate just how wide a range of possible realities science allows. Rajnar likes to seek out the boundaries and poke at them to see what happens. He obviously has fun doing it, and so do the readers who go along for the ride. I know I did when I was editing Analog. Whenever I saw a new submission from him, I knew I was in for a treat, but I seldom knew what kind of a treat. His imagination, and the ideas he explored, and the tones of his stories, were all over the map—often surprising, but never dull.

Who else, for example, would imagine a human psychiatrist building a practice on treating a motley assortment of extraterrestrials of species he’d never encountered before? A human psychiatrist treating human patients at least has some idea of what constitutes “normal,” and can view that as a goal of his treatment. But what if he has no idea what is normal for a new kind of patient? (And why would aliens seek out a human to help them, anyway? I won’t answer that, but the answer can be found in these pages.)

I’ve long thought that the “completely incomprehensible alien” is one of the most overworked and least plausible notions in science fiction. There are certain very basic things that any living being must deal with, and most of his/her/its actions are ways of dealing with those needs. If you don’t understand its actions, that’s unlikely to mean there’s no logic to them, or even no logic that human minds can grasp. It’s far more likely that you simply don’t understand the underlying premises—or, in one of our vernaculars, “where the alien is coming from.” If you take the trouble to do so, things will probably make sense.

Dr. Alien’s patients may seem as baffling a lot as any you’ll ever meet, but they make sense on their own terms. I think you’ll enjoy meeting them. And who knows? Maybe truth is more like Rajnar’s fiction than most of us think!



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