Earlier this month, I revisited the short-lived Dr. Wendell Urth series of short stories, "Earth is An Armchair: The Wendell Urth Quartet by Isaac Asimov," which was brought back to my attention by two anonymous comments left on The Caves of Steel (1953/54) review – recommending the Edward Wellen pastiche "Murder in the Urth Degree" ("...which has perturbed me ever since"). "Murder in the Urth Degree" is a pastiche specially written for Foundation's Friends, Stories in Honor of Isaac Asimov (1989) with short stories set in Asimov's universe. I'll admit right off the bat this is a good short story and pastiche, but not for the reason you might think.
Keith Flammersfeld, "the lone experimenter aboard Terrarium Nine," is hard worker and only occasionally takes a break to enjoy an interactive video. When the story opens, Flammersfeld is enjoying an interactive video of Through the Looking Glass, but, shortly after plugging out, discovers "someone had entered his system and infected it with rabid doggerel" ("who will win the Red Queen's race?"). A computer virus? A very elusive stowaway who suddenly made its presence known to Flammersfeld? The answer, or part of the answer, is found in the disturbance, uprooted soil of a cabbage patch in Buck Two. Flammersfeld "knew perfectly well what had grown at this particular spot, what should still be growing here, what seemed now on the loose" – stalking and targeting him ("how could he not have seen its intelligence waken, its hate turn on him?"). And he does not survive the encounter.
Now you might think I've revealed too much or Wellen tipped his hand too early, which is not the case. Wellen just managed expectations very well by not being too mysterious about what exactly was running loose in Buck Two of Terrarium Nine. It just needed a lot of horrifying details filled in.
That brings Inspector H. Seton Davenport, of the Terrestrial Bureau of Investigation, to the extraterrologists' extraterrologist, Dr. Wendell Urth. From the point of the view of the investigators, the death of Flammersfeld presents something of an impossible crime ("we can't call it accident, we can't call it murder, and we're not ready to call it suicide”) on a isolated space station with an array of bizarre clues and facts. Flammersfeld died from a poison-tipped dart, "a weird kind of curare crudely prepared," of which the remnants were found in a walnut shell along with a crude, toy-like catapult and winch ("...contraptions looked as if a child might have put them together"). And a decomposed cabbage! So had the story not been a quasi-inverted mystery showing from the beginning the murderer is non-human, the ending would have been something of a letdown. Well, not to its purely science-fiction audience, but the visiting detective fan certainly would have been disappointed. Now "Murder in the Urth Degree" stands as the most striking of the Wendell Urth short stories. An imitation outshining the original!
However, "Murder in the Urth Degree" is perhaps closer to a science-fiction/horror hybrid seasoned with a pinch of existential dread than an actual science-fiction mystery, but a great short story regardless. I enjoyed it. Thanks for the recommendation, Anon!
In lots of ways, I think, Wellen's addition of existential dread and a vibe of horror adds considerably -more- to the Wendell Urth mystery style. Urth is detached from the story and able to follow it all to its end, and it feels very much like Wellen was inspired partly by Urth, and partly by Columbo (speaking of which, Crippen & Landau reprinted their Columbo collection just last month).
ReplyDeleteAdding that air of 'what the -unholy hell- is going on there?' really, I think, improved the Urth-style mysteries, especially since you could see -something- unveiled in Urth at the same moment through how he approached the problem and the villain. I wouldn't try it with a 'monster of the week' every time, but I think the one thing Wellen added that Asimov wasn't as good at was the -atmosphere- the mystery was set up in, and I feel like improving that touch without quite revealing the criminal would be an excellent ingredient to what those Asimov Wendell Urth stories needed.
I'm pretty damned surprised Foundation's Friends had an Urth mystery in the first place, but it did a great job in feeling like an Asimov homage, rather than a pastiche.
Ideally, this series should be a combination of Asimov's original vision (an earthbound space detective) with the existential dread and science-fiction horror Wellen brought to the series. You're right it shouldn't become some sort of Scooby-Doo in space, but it hasn't to be that way. For example, Wellen's approach would have considerably improved Asimov's original Wendell Urth stories. A criticism of "The Talking Stone" is how callously Asimov treats the dying alien trying to communicate with the humans in its final moments. I think Wellen's treatment would have made it a little more than merely a solid science-fiction mystery puzzle. "The Key" is another good example that could have wonderfully mixed dread and wonder by concentrating entirely on the billion-year puzzle of what, and who, crashed on the Moon eons before dinosaurs walked the Earth.
DeleteI'm always weary when it comes to pastiches, but seriously want someone to take another crack at this series. It would be a waste of a good character and series premise otherwise.
BTW, "The Dust of Death", in the Asimov's Mysteries anthology, was also intended to be a Wendell Urth story before he was written out. Thoughts on that as well?
ReplyDeleteI only reread the official Wendell Urth stories from Asimov's Mysteries and have no memory of "The Dust of Death" from my first read. So no thoughts on that story, but I'll place it on the reread list. It's a good excuse to also revisit "Obituary."
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