Tue 8 Sep 2020
Pulp SF Stories I’m Reading: HENRY KUTTNER “Don’t Look Now.â€
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Science Fiction & Fantasy , Stories I'm Reading[7] Comments
HENRY KUTTNER “Don’t Look Now.†First published in Startling Stories, March 1948. Reprinted many times, including: My Best Science Fiction Story, edited by Oscar J. Friend & Leo Margulies (Merlin Press, hardcover, 1949); The Great Science Fiction Stories: Volume 10, 1948, edited by Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW, paperback, 1983); and Tales from the Spaceport Bar, edited by George H. Scithers & Darrell Schweitzer (Avon, paperback, 1987). Collected in Two-Handed Engine by Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore (Centipede Press, hardcover, 2005).
Mos Eisley and the spaceport bar. What a perfect scene. One that thousands of long time science fiction fans had read about and pictured in their minds for years. And there it was, having come to life right before their eyes.
Bars where spacefarers come to talk, lie and swap yarns. Not all of them human. All kinds and shapes of aliens used Mos Eisley as a stopover point, a place to restock and refuel and catch up on the news. Or in some cases the bar is on Earth, and the conversation is between two men, and the Martians are the beings secretly ruling the world that one of the men is trying to convince the other he can see. Most of the time they are invisible, lurking just out the corner of your eye, but when you can see them, they are easily identified by their third eye. Right in the middle of their foreheads.
This is a classic story, first published way back in 1948, and if you go looking, over 70 years later, I’m sure you can find a book in print that it’s in, or if not, then in ebook format. In those years after the war, there was a certain uncertainty, if not outright paranoia, about the possibility we were not alone in the universe, that mankind had lost control of things, and in “Don’t Look Now,†Kuttner, in his most humorous mode, capitalizes on it most excellently.
September 8th, 2020 at 7:18 pm
Kuttner is always worth a read, from his swashbuckling space opera era to more playful works to some of the best serious SF written.
September 8th, 2020 at 7:29 pm
That sums up his span of writing ability quite nicely. It’s too bad he died so young. He was only 43 when he died. And we also lost his wife, C. L. Moore, as well. She pretty much stopped writing after his death, and as I recall, after her remarriage, she stopped together. What stories they might have written!
September 8th, 2020 at 10:33 pm
Steve,
Could this story be a cold war analogy? Seeing Martians everywhere = seeing Russians everywhere?
Kuttner handles the story masterfully. I was surprised at the ending; I thought i knew where things were going but Kuttner subverted my expectations. A great writer who met an untimely death.
September 8th, 2020 at 11:44 pm
Martians = Russians. Yes. Once the thought occurs to you, a funny story funnily told doesn’t seem quite as funny any more.
September 9th, 2020 at 2:39 pm
Twilight Zone took this a step further with “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”
September 9th, 2020 at 3:12 pm
You’re right, Viktor. How could I have forgotten that one. Rod Serling wrote the screenplay, but I’m sure he had to have read the Kuttner story at some time before.
September 9th, 2020 at 3:14 pm
You’re right, Viktor. How could I have not remembered this one? Rod Serling wrote the screenplay, but I’m sure he had to have read the Kuttner story at some point earlier on: