Under the Skin E-Book

Leslie Perri

• Herausgeber: Wildside Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 52

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The road to Ul was paved with danger, difficulty, and good intentions—and it's an open question which of the three was most disastrous! Includes a new introduction by John Betancourt.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION

UNDER THE SKIN, by Leslie Perri

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2022 by Wildside Press LLC.

Originally published in Infinity Science Fiction, June 1956.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

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INTRODUCTION

Who was Leslie Perri, and why—since she only published 3 short stories—is she important to the science fiction field?

Leslie Perri was actually a pen name. The author behind it was Doris Marie Claire “Doë” Baumgardt, an American science fiction fan, writer, and illustrator. She was one of the handful of women involved in early science fiction fandom, and she was a member of the Futurians—the science fiction fan club that boasted as members many of the top writers and editors to emerge in the golden age of science fiction. Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Donald A. Wollheim, Robert A.W. Lowndes, James Blish, Damon Knight, Virginia Kidd, C.M. Kornbluth, Larry Shaw, and Richard Wilson were all members, among others.

Baumgardt was introduced to the Futurians through Pohl, who she was dating at the time (and briefly married). She later married Richard Wilson, with whom she had two children. Her accomplishments in science fiction fandom are also notable she—was also a founding member of FAPA, the Fantasy Amateur Press Association, and one of only five members of the Futurians allowed into the first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939 by Sam Moskowitz (the other four were Isaac Asimov, Richard Wilson, David Kyle, and Jack Robinson). The Futurians were largely barred over political ideology; Moskowitz thought they might cause trouble if admitted to the convention. In addition to her short fiction, Baumgardt contributed both artwork and written pieces to a variety of fanzines such as Future Art, Futurian News, Le VombiteurLiteraire, Mind of Man, Mutant, and Fantasy Fictioneer.

She edited several romance pulp magazines briefly, and she became a reporter when husband Richard Wilson took a job with Reuters. Her 3 professional science fiction publications were “Space Episode,” (Future Combined with Science Fiction, Dec. 1941), “In the Forest,” (If,Sept. 1953), and “Under the Skin,” (Infinity Science Fiction, June 1956). “Space Episode” has been often anthologized in feminist science fiction anthologies because if features a strong female heroine—a rarity in 1941 pulp fiction.

—John Betancourt

Cabin John, Maryland

UNDER THE SKIN,by Leslie Perri

I ran a story the other day about the arrival on Earth of a Martian diplomat and his wife. And I okayed a picture of the lady presiding over a tea at the Martian embassy. I looked at the picture for quite a while. The lady in her costume, fresh from the Couture Syndicate in Rio, was a carbon copy of every other woman. What was different about her was no longer very different. It was sad, and it was frightening, too.

It took me back to the days when Deborah and I were pioneering in the gloomy bureau Universal News had set up in Marsport. I remember the biggest story we ever covered; it was the only one we never wrote. And I’ve been waiting for a time when I could break it because sooner or later you can take the lid off anything. It illustrates a point I try to make when I can.

In the early days we were frequently involved in Martian difficulties. It was partly through genuine concern for their welfare; we liked the Martians without question. But it was also, curiously, motivated by an almost adolescent eagerness to demonstrate efficiency and speed and worth to a people who remained friendly and grateful but aloof and paternally amused by our energies.

This story started as suddenly and simply as most disasters usually strike on Mars, or anywhere. A news flash was relayed in from an interior hill community, Faleeng, to our Marsport office. The news flash to Universal News came almost simultaneously with the official SOS.

Disaster had struck a small community of Martians in the Ul Mountains—a mining region, remote and inaccessible to the Martian land machines. Power failure threatened the colony of 2,000 with extinction. Intense cold was slowly, inexorably moving in from the cheerless sandstone hills from which Ul had been carved.

It was top news as it stood, but there was an additional detail that made it a real 72-point type headline, a screamer. Ul was the seat of Martian diranium mining operations. And Mars ran on diranium ore and whatever it was that the Martians did with it.

We didn’t know anything about diranium then and the Martians kept it that way. We had nothing like it and it drew the con boys like a magnet. But fruitlessly. Ambassador Ferne, a real level guy with the Martians, made sure nothing like diranium ever left in anyone’s carpet bag. Our relations with the Martians were smooth, as a result. There was really nothing else we wanted from them.

Except maybe to see what their women looked like, and, oh yes, their children. No ancient system of purdah was ever stricter. They were inflexible on the subject. They had not only instituted elaborate precautions for keeping their women invisible, it was, also, distinctly a breach of good manners to mention them. We had been given a rough idea of the methods the Martians employed in rearing children, but while it excited a lot of psychologist chaps with its novelty, we were still frustrated and speculative about their female relations. Who must have been a pretty attractive and exotic lot, to judge by their men.

But you couldn’t, if you were decent, do anything but defer to the Martians in the matter. They were wonderful people, honest, friendly and with no ax to grind. They invariably brought out your best without any seeming effort. They made you examine into your motives, and the darker nooks and crannies of your far-from-perfect-soul.

Consequently, the Ul disaster packed a real wallop for us.

* * * *

When the Martian authorities got the news from Ul they appealed to Ferne for assistance. The U.F.S. Rocket Auxiliary was the fastest transportation available on Mars, faster than anything the Martians had. The Ambassador ordered the rocket fleet to assist in the immediate evacuation of stricken Ulans to Marsport medical stations.

In addition a team of Martian and Earth Federation technicians boarded the lead ship, Electra