Hunter, Come Home: by Richard McKenna

On that planet the damned trees were immortal...

Richard McKenna was not particularly known as a genre author. His name rests largely on his war novel, The Sand Pebbles; however, he did contribute at least one classic to science fiction with his novella Hunter, Come Home. The influence of this story, I think, can now be found everywhere and in everything, perhaps most recently in James Cameron's Avatar, and it doesn't really get its due recognition.

On the human colony planet Mordin a rite of passage tradition has grown out of the struggle to tame the habitat - young Mordinmen must fight and kill a beast known as the Great Russel before progressing to full manhood. As time passes the number of human males far surpasses the number of surviving Great Russels and a social and cultural bottleneck threatens the colony's viability. To remedy this the Mordin Hunt Council takes possession of a neighbouring planet which it intends to terraform and seed with Great Russels, so that the stock may be replenished for hunt purposes. There is only the matter of that planet's indigenous species, which are judged to be non-sentient plant life and safe to exterminate. The terraforming party's instructions are to poison the entire planet with a toxin known as Thanasis. But the planet, which remains unnamed, refuses to die.

Among the Mordinmen is Craig - a "blankie" - who has not yet killed his Great Russel. He shares, more than most, the Mordinmen's frustration at the planet's resistance. Yet he feels strangely akin to the planet's most visible inhabitant, the Phytos - these are luminous and gentle spores whose migrations seem almost to be only intelligent sign of a response to the Thanasis toxin. As each new toxin infestation is released they develop livid wheals and inner lights, as though the dawning comprehension of hostilities has of itself conferred sentience. The power of the story lies in its slow-burning narrative of a planet becoming aware of danger and rousing itself to anger. Craig realises this, eventually, and changes sides, but by then it is too late for them all.

I was transfixed by this story throughout. Its subtexts are timeless - it is an early Gaia rendering, and an ecological warning; it is also a story of men in the jungle whose war becomes insensible with death. The prose is strikingly beautiful and the characterisation is superb; much of the plotting retains classical elements, particularly in the fate of Craig and his nominal love interest (who walks away with the human prize). It could be a story of human arrogance and alien frailty, except that these must inevitably be reversed, perhaps because human arrogance is frailty. The Phytos understand this; which is why their revenge is commuted to tragedy.

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1963, Hunter, Come Home was later collected in Casey Agonistes, a welcome volume of the various short fictions McKenna contributed to magazines during his early years. Happily this was issued by Gollancz in hardcover and by Pan in paperback, and copies of both are fairly easy to come by.

The Deep of Winter: by Chris Butler

Chris Butler's striking story The Deep of Winter, featured in the current issue of Interzone (259) and illustrated by Martin Hanford, reads in summary like a classic piece of fantasy: a white witch steals into an alternate dimension to conduct an experiment in telepathy; but she succeeds only in transmitting her own legend to the natives, thereby allowing her people to track and return her for trial.

Broken into consecutive characters streams which read like crossed thoughts, the dual narrative belies the fantasy and presents the witch, Aluna, as a student working towards a thesis; her efforts are rejected by her society as juvenile and dangerous and she is forbidden from further study in the matter. Not to be deterred, she picks her dimension and proceeds. The alternate narrative thread follows Sebastian, leader of an explorative party, working its way through an abandoned underground city towards her legend, or rather her legerdemain. These narratives meet ungently, and the witnessed extraction of Aluna from her experiment enhances her legend.

And so, for all Aluna's careless witchery, perhaps her experiment succeeds, as Sebastian suddenly finds himself more alert than ever to his wife and children, and to his place in a society that he now sees through fresh and perhaps questioning eyes. Butler's part premise is that telepathy is undoubtedly a form of enhanced empathy; more, that motifs of folklore give voice to a common flora and fauna which can be intuited - that is: shared to be understood. And these are the beginnings of empathy.

It's always a pleasure to read Chris Butler's stories in Interzone - my first experience of his work there was The Festival of Tethselem, a story I would thoroughly recommend if you can find the back issue (224).

The Deep of Winter is a story that erupts beyond its wordage and inhabits the mind of the reader as stream of discourse.

Kamtellar: by R. Chetwynd-Hayes

Be happy in the place of horseless carriages...

R. Chetwynd-Hayes is perhaps better known as a horror anthologist than for his own stories; yet in a productive career he published several well-received novels and collections, all of which are thankfully unabused by cult status. Kamtellar is the title story of his 1980 collection, and while it is billed as a novella, at 40,000 words it feels like rather more than that. There is much to admire in its deceptively simple premise, wherein it seems as though the characters of a Hammer movie have got behind the set to find it is, after all, painted on both sides. Inspired by one of Ambrose Bierce's anecdotes, and perhaps by the fate of Bierce himself, it pulls an Englishman out of the sedate Hampshire countryside and into a hellishly familiar colony, where social and spiritual arrangements are no more than a tax that the devil levies on the landscape.

Paul Sinclair's departure from our world is occasioned by a bicycle crash. He finds himself on the outskirts of a small village, the skyline of which is dominated by a huge black house that does not cast a shadow - being somehow its own shadow. He is taken in by one of the villagers whose beautiful daughter, Movita, does not escape his eye. Sinclair is immediately drawn into a struggle: every night doors and windows are barricaded as defence against the creatures which issue forth from the black house and lay siege to the village. Sinclair finds that these villagers inhabit a curious hell - they believe that the flying machines and horseless carriages of his own world are the heaven promised them for their endurance in the land of Kamtellar, and its capital, Hadelton. Sinclair persuades Movita to flee the village in the hope of reaching the capital. But in a hunt organised by the Great Satan, they are chased across the countryside by all manner of nightmare creatures; until Sinclair finds that in the land of the supernatural, rationalism is afforded its own distinct power. But, of course, it is possible to rationalise almost anything away, and Sinclair's found power proves his undoing, even at the very moment of relief. For as went the hunt, there goes Movita... like the Great Satan, he simply cannot help himself.

While it is possible to identify the moment when Chetwynd-Hayes realised he did not have on his hands the novel he wished for, and the accompanying note of disappointment, Kamtellar is still a wildly enjoyable story which often reads like Rogue Male rewritten by H.P. Lovecraft. True, there are few inventions of evil within its pages - rather its qualities are to be found in the extraordinary, stoic routines of the villagers; in the breathless chase of its climax; and in the shiftless angel Movita, whose presence in this world is a greater mystery than its existence.

Like the black house, this story is always its own shadow.