review of Fredric Brown's
Honeymoon in Hell
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 30, 2018

This is a collection of Brown short stories. The title story is the 1st one & is copyrighted 1950. It begins:

"On September 16th in the year 1962, things were going along the same as usual, only a little worse. The cold war that had been waxing and waning between the United States and the Eastern Alliance—Russia, Dhina, and their lesser satellites—was warmer than it had ever been. War, hot war, seemed not only inevitable but extremely imminent.

"The race for the Moon was an immediate cause. Each nation had landed a few men on it and each claimed it." - p 1

There's Brown's prediction. He was wrong. Not that I think Brown was really trying to be a prophet. I read another story based around the race for the moon 6 mnths ago: Pierre Boulle's Garden on the Moon ( "Pierre Boulle: Conducts!": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/619777-pierre-boulle ). Boulle's was more scientifically researched, Brown's was funnier. I liked them both.

W/o giving away too much (I hope), the ending of this story is similar to the ending of Mack Reynolds's novel After Utopia:

""Listen, Junior, why are you telling me this? If what happened is a colossal hoax, why let me in on it?"

""It is to the interests in humanity in general not to know the truth. Believing in the existence of inimical extra-terrestrials, they will attain peace and amity among themselves, and they will reach the planets and then the stars. It is, however, to your personal interest to know the truth. And you will not expose the hoax." - p 34

There's something similar to the ending of Brown's novel Martians, Go Home. Much SF after WWII was understandably preoccupied w/ the possibility of humans blowing ourselves to smithereens w/ our new superweapons & what-the-fuck-can-be-done-about-it?! Ideas of how to get humans to stop hating each other by getting us all to hate an imaginary ET were as practical as any.

The next story, "The Dome", takes another common theme: post-apocalyptic-war conditions & puts a positive spin on it:

"The gray wall was gone—what lay beyond it was sheerly incredible.

"Not the Cleveland he'd known but a beautiful city, a new city. What had been a narrow street was a wide boulevard. The houses, the buildings, were clean and beautiful, the style of architecture strange to him. Grass, trees, everything well kept. What had happened—how could it be? After atomic war mankind couldn't possibly have come back this far, this quickly." - p 55

What if, insteasd of an atomic war, we just tear each other part at a more local level? Over petty disagreements at work or in the line at a supermarket? That might be more of a J.G.Ballard prediction. That might bring us into a "Hall of Mirrors":

"The 'closet' from which you have just stepped is, as you have now realized, a time machine. From it you stepped into the world of 2004. The date is April 7th, just fifty years from the time you last remember." - p 62

That story was copyrighted 1953, the year I was born. I've already lived thru 2004, it's in my past. I have yet to read a story that predicts accurately all the things that have caused paradigm shifts around me: most notably home computers, the internet, & smart-phones. Unfortunately, religious wars still plague us, the war between the sexes still plagues us, delusions of ethnic & racial superiority still plague us. Even smart-phones haven't conquered those mental illnesses. Brown, like any good SF short story writer, is expert at putting a new spin on something in just a few pages:

""Do you see how our previous theories of time travel have been wrong? We expected to be able to step into a time machine in, say, 2004, set it for fifty years back, and then step out in the year 1954 . . . but it does not work that way. The machine does not move in time. Only whatever is within the machine is affected, and then just with relation to itself and not to the rest of the Universe.

""I confirmed this with guinea pigs by sending one six weeks old five weeks back and it came out a baby.["]" - p 64

In "Mouse" the narrator explains his view from his window of a spaceship being investigated to his cat:

""A metallurgist, Beautiful," Bill Wheeler explained to the Siamese, who wasn't watching at all. "And I'll bet you ten pounds of liver to one miaouw he finds that's an alloy that's brand new to him.["]" - p 83

Why I was just having a conversation like that w/ Harvey t'other day. In fact, I was telling Harvey that "Naturally" has the perfect short story premise:

"Mathematics in general had always been difficult for him and now he was finding that geometry was impossible for him to learn.

"And if he flunked it, he was through with college; he'd flunked three other courses in his first two years and another failure this year would, under college rules, cause automatic explulsion.

"He wanted that college degree badly too, since it was indispensable for the career he'd chosen and worked towad. Only a miracle could save him now.

"He sat up suddenly as an idea struck him. Why not try magic?" - p 91

Yep, magic or a pill. Of course, what wd've worked best wd've been for him to be at a rich person's university. Then there's no way they'd flunk him, the tuition wd be too big to lose.

"And the Gods Laughed": It seems to me that I've run across the idea of a "Liar's Club" in other bks, probably even in at least one other SF bk:

"With most of the day to do nothing else, you listen to some real whoppers, stories that would make the old-time Liar's Club back on Earth seem like Sunday-school meetings." - p 130

So I looked for Liar's Club online & didn't find any immediate historical references. Instead, there's the Perfect Liar's Club in Washington, DC — that seems like an appropriate locale; & another bar called simply Liar's Club in Chicago. Then there's "The Liars' Club", "a memoir by American author Mary Karr. Published in 1995, it tells the story of Karr's childhood in the 1960s in a small industrial town" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Liars'_Club ) & "The Liars Club — A Blog by People Who Lie for a Living". That latter's more like it. Lying isn't usually just tall-tale telling, it's tall-tale telling w/ an ulterior motive. Like the kind of ulterior motive you'd have if you were an earing-like creature wanting to take over a host body:

""You're crazy," Charlie said, "Sure, I know you were on that expedition and I wasn't, but you're still crazy, because I had a quick look at some of the pictures they brought back. The natives wore earrings."

""No," I said. "Earrings wore them." - p 131

Think about that the next time you date someone w/ a genital or tongue or nipple piercing. Maybe the people are nothing more than "A Word from Our Sponsor":

"Eight-thirty o'clock continued its way around the world. Mostly in jumps of an even hour from time-zone to time-zone, but not always; some time-zones vary for that system—as Singapore, on the half hour; as Calcutta, seven minutes short of the hour." - p 151

Do you mean the world hasn't been standardized yet? Well, yes, it has.. but it hadn't been as of the time of this story:

"As part of British Malaya, Singapore originally adopted the Malayan time, which was 7 hours 30 minutes ahead of GMT in 1941.

"Following the Japanese occupation, Malaya adopted Tokyo time of GMT 9 on 15 February 1942. Although official appointments were made according to Tokyo time it was common practice to keep two separate times: the pre-Occupation time at home and Tokyo time on personal watches.

"At the end of World War II and the return of Malaya to the British, Singapore reverted to its pre-war timezone.

"Daylight saving time in Singapore

"Although Singapore does not currently observe daylight saving time in the traditional sense due to its tropical location, a form of daylight saving time, using a 20-minute offset, was introduced on an annual basis by the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements in 1933.

"In 1932, Sir Arnold Robinson raised the idea of 20-minute offset after an earlier attempt was abandoned in 1920 which was first proposed by Sir Laurence Guillemard for a 30-minute offset.The 20-minute offset was formally adopted as standard time in Singapore in 1936, and in 1 September 1941 the offset was increased to 30 minutes, the same as the 1920 proposal.

"Malaysian standardisation

"In 1981, Malaysia decided to standardize the time across its territories to a uniform UTC 08:00. Singapore elected to follow suit, citing business and travel schedules. The change took effect on 1 January 1982, when Singapore moved half an hour forward, on 31 December 1981 at 11:30 pm, creating "Singapore Standard Time" (SST). SST is eight hours ahead of UTC and is synchronized with Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing, Manila and Perth." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Standard_Time

I declare myself the newest conquerer of Singapore & make it running on Pittsburgh time. That's not too hard, really, no big deal: according to the old system, it's 9:45AM in Singapore while it's 9:45PM in Pittsburgh. We just exchange day-for-night, like they do in the movies, & it's now 9:45PM in Singapore. No prob. In the interest of pre-planned obsolescence I plan to change that next wk so that it's 9:44ZM in Singapore when it's 9:45PM in Pittsburgh. No one will be told what the "Z" stands for. 'But what about Calcutta?' you sputter?

"Calcutta time was one of the two time zones established in British India in 1884. It was established during the International Meridian Conference held at Washington, D.C. in the United States. It was decided that India had two time zones: Calcutta (now Kolkata) would use the 90th meridian east and Bombay (Mumbai) the 75th meridian east.

"Calcutta time was described as being 24 minutes ahead of Indian standard time and one hour and three minutes ahead of Bombay standard time (UTC 5:54). It has also been described as 32 minutes and 20 seconds ahead of Madras time (UTC 5:53:20).

"Even when Indian Standard Time (IST) was adopted on 1 January 1906, Calcutta time remained in effect until 1948 when it was abandoned in favour of IST.

"In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Calcutta time was the dominant time of the Indian part of the British empire with records of astronomical and geological events recorded in it. Willian Strachey, an uncle of Lytton Strachey was said to have visited Calcutta once and then "kept his own watch set resolutely to Calcutta time, organizing the remaining fifty-six years of his life accordingly". James Clavell, in his novel King Rat, refers to news broadcasts as occurring in "Calcutta time"." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcutta_Time

When I become world dictator I'm going to force Singapore & Calcutta to mate, Britain is going to have Malay as its 1st language, & every day in randomly selected cities is going to have 25 hours that're less than 60 minutes long. But I digress.

Having been birthed in the secret social experiment known as Baltimore, my attn percolates:

""The broadcast, gentlemen, was heard uniformly in all areas of the Eastern Time Zone which have daylight saving, where it is now seven-thirty P.M."

""Impossible," said the Secretary of Defense.

"The Presient nodded slowly. "Exactly. Yet certain reports from borders of time zones in Europe led us to anticipate it, and it was checked carefully. Radio receivers were placed, in pairs, along the borders of certain zones. For example, a pair of receivers were placed at the city limits of Baltimore, one twelve inches within the city limits, the other twelve inches outside. Two feet apart. They were identical sets, identically tuned to the same station, operated from the same power source. One set received 'a word from our sponsor'; the other did not. The set-up is being maintained for another hour. But I do not doubt that—" He glanced at his wrist watch. "—forty-five minutes from now, when it will be eight-thirty o'clock in the non-daylight-saving zones, the situation will be reversed; the broadcast will be received by the set outside the daylight saving zone border and not by the similarly tuned set just inside."" - p 154

I can explain that: It's like this, see, the ants are the Mafia & the Police, they partner to save the daylight so that they can use it in dark seasons; the grasshopper lives in the city, I was a grasshopper, I know, & when it's dying of vitamin D deficiency the cops & robbers will only sell the daylight back at exorbitant prices. Hence, the more foolish grasshoppers try to gamble to make the money — not realizing that you can hear the results on the radio in the city & step into the county & make yr bet. It all gets very complicated but there's no fucking way the ants are going to let the grasshoppers party AND win. They are shit out of luck, the game is fixed, the world is fixed, the daylight is CONTROLLED in a secret government experiment.

"["]And who ever heard of men obeying a command unless they knew—or thoguht they knew—who gave it? If anybody ever learns who gave that command, he can decide whetherto obey it or not. As long as he doesn't know, it's psychologically almost impossible for him to obey it."

"The President nodded slowly. "I see what you mean. Men either obey or disobey commands—even commands they think comes from God—according to their own will. But how can they obey an order, and still be men, when they don't know for sure where the order came from?"" - p 163

Discuss.

"Rustle of Wings": I was raised to call my grandmothers "Gram". Does anybody say that anymore? Most of my younger friends call their grandmothers "Telegram" or "Strip-o-gram" but I don't hear just plain "gram" anymore:

"Gram was a good woman and a Methodist and never touched a card, except occasionally to put away a deck that Gramp had left lying somewhere, and then she'd handle it gingerly, almost as though it might explode." - p 164

I don't kmow whether my grandfathers wd've been called "Gramp" b/c they were dead before I was born — probably worked to death by the Matriarchy.

The End. ( )

Short stories reprinted from Galaxy, Fantasy and Science Fiction, etc. ( )

It's a collection of SF stories from the 1950s. I really enjoyed it, but it does have a very strong 1950s feel. Lots of atom bomb/Cold War stuff. Another reviewer described all this as dated--I prefer to think of it as "of its time". Fredric Brown has a conversational style that I particularly enjoyed. ( )

Interesting. Fun but dated. ( )

Highly enjoyable collection of stories featuring Brown's unique sense of humor. These are the types of stories that I read when I first encountered Brown, probably in Junior High School. It was only many years later that I discovered his equally (maybe more) fascinating mystery novels, such as "The Screaming Mimi".

Reading these stories is, for the most part, like sitting in the room hearing a great storyteller tell tales in person. A few writers are like that--Jack Finney, Stephen King at his best, and certainly Fredric Brown. This book features a variety of stories, some pretty serious science fiction, some of his wonderful short-short stories, one that is made up of a series of puns, and a few that fall in between. The most famous story in the book, "Arena", was the basis of the Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk must battle the alien commander one-on-one to decide the outcome of a war. Other than the basic premise, however, the Star Trek version is very different from Brown's original. Brown's alien isn't reptilian; it is a tentacled rolling thing, but I guess that might have been a little too much for the special effects crew. Brown was a prolific writer. I especially like the fact that he sold two variations of a short-short time travel story to two different magazines in the same year.

Although I enjoyed it immensely, most of these stories are less than profound, however, and therefore the 3 1/2 star rating. ( )