Legwork
by Eric Frank Russell
Astounding Science Fiction (April 1956); reprinted Vol. XII, No. 9 (British Edition, September 1956), 49-86.
Published soon after Russell’s classic novel ‘Three to Conquer’, this SF invasion novelette upends the scenario by pitting everyday human grunts against what should be an all-powerful alien telepath. Russell’s distinctive prose ensures that, 70 years on, readers are still carried along.
The Time Traveller’s Almanac: Mazes & Traps
ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (Head of Zeus, 2014)
audiobook read by Jeff Harding, Andrew Wincott & Antonia Beamish (W F Howes, 2014)
Name authors are prioritised over quality of story (though all receive perfunctory, unpolished biographies). There are some nice ideas poorly executed, some truly tedious offerings, and only a few standouts: Adrian Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Mouse Ran Down’ and Eric Frank Russell’s ‘The Waitabits’.
The Door
by Eric Frank Russell, Universe Science Fiction #4 (March 1954), pp. 6-17.
A plotless short story likening career spacers to lovelorn young men grown old in service to the Foreign Legion. Russell pitches this as a SF fairy tale, but the framing narrative is awkward and the voice offers nothing of his usual personality.
A Present From Joe
by Eric Frank Russell
Astounding Science Fiction (February 1949); reprinted Best sf: Science Fiction Stories, ed. Edmund Crispin (Faber and Faber, 1955), pp. 199-213.
SF short story. In his inimitable, puckish manner, Russell attributes mankind’s warlike propensities to the telepathically induced manipulations of a non-spacefaring alien race whose invasion plan requires humanity first to come to them! The aliens’ POV reveals a Machiavellian kinship of thought.
Dreadful Sanctuary
by Eric Frank Russell (Astounding Science Fiction, 1948)
revised novelised edition (Lancer, 1963)
How do you know you are sane? Russell’s hardboiled, offbeat prose drives a SF conspiracy thriller born, like Sinister Barrier, of Fortean speculation. The Lancer publication, purportedly revised by Russell himself, substitutes an ending markedly more pessimistic than those of other editions.
The Man from R.O.B.O.T.
by Harry Harrison (Analog, July 1969)
This novelette sees Harry Harrison in one of his lighter moods. The ‘one man against a world’ scenario is reminiscent of Eric Frank Russell, as is the irreverence threaded throughout, but the journey in this case leads to a rather banal denouement.
Sinister Barrier
by Eric Frank Russell (The World’s Work, 1943)
Russell’s first novel evinces nothing of his later puckishness. Instead it is a hardboiled SF invasion yarn that reads well under its own steam but less so when the characters act as mouthpieces for Russell’s Fortean beliefs, which informed the chilling concept.
Design for Great-Day
by Eric Frank Russell (Planet Stories, January 1953); subsequently republished as ‘The Ultimate Invader’ [Novella]
In several of his stories Russell took delight in sending up blinkered authority. In this novella he endowed his protagonist not only with the usual insouciance but also the ethical clout of a highly advanced multi-species commune. At first rib-tickling, then earnest.
Men, Martians and Machines
by Eric Frank Russell (Dennis Dobson, 1955)
A fix-up novel in which Russell’s characteristic humour is tempered in favour of fully realised SF space opera. Few who’ve read these four interlocked novelettes/novellas will ever forget their mixed-species crew, nor the ingeniously bellicose alien environments that Russell conjures for exploration.
The Great Explosion
by Eric Frank Russell (Dennis Dobson, 1962)
The novel whose gentle drollery earned Russell a posthumous Prometheus Award for libertarian SF. Russell’s short stories often poked fun at authority. In this longer form his anti-conformist, anti-bureaucratic ribbing encompasses also a wistful sense of the individual’s place amongst the stars.