Dangerous Visions (27 page)

Alone, he stood there staring at the victorious cleanliness of this Utopia. With their talents they would keep him alive, possibly alive forever, immortal in the possible expectation of needing him for amusement again someday. He was stripped to raw essentials in a mind that was no longer anything more than jelly matter. To go madder and madder, and never to know peace or end or sleep.

He stood there, a creature of dirt and alleys, in a world as pure as the first breath of a baby.

"My name isn't Jack," he said softly. But they would never know his real name. Nor would they care. "
My name isn't Jack
!" he said loudly. No one heard.

"MY NAME ISN'T JACK, AND I'VE BEEN BAD, VERY BAD, I'M AN EVIL PERSON BUT MY NAME ISN'T JACK!" he screamed, and screamed, and screamed again, walking aimlessly down an empty street, in plain view, no longer forced to prowl. A stranger in the City.

Afterword:

The paths down which our minds entice us are often not the ones we thought we were taking. And the destinations frequently leave something to be desired in the area of hospitality. Such a case is the story you have just read.

It took me fifteen months—off and on—to write "The Prowler In The City At The Edge Of The World." As I indicated in my introduction to Bob Bloch's story, it was first a visual image without a plot—the creature of filth in the city of sterile purity. It seemed a fine illustration, but it was little more than that, I'm afraid. At best I thought it might provide a brief moment of horror in a book where realism (even couched in fantasy) was omnipresent.

I suggested the illustration to Bloch and he did his version of it. But the folly of trying to put one man's vision in another man's head (even when the vision was directly caused by the vision of the first man) was obvious.

So I decided to color my own illustration. With Bloch's permission. But what was my story? I was intrigued by the entire
concept
of a Ripper, a killer of obvious derangement who nonetheless worked in a craftsmanlike manner to such estimable ends that he was never apprehended. And the letters of braggadocio he had sent to the newspapers and the police and George Lusk of the East London vigilantes. The audacity of the man! The eternal horror of him! I was hooked.

But I still had no story.

Still, I tried to write it. I started it two dozen times—easily—in the fifteen months during which I edited this anthology. Started it and slumped to a stop after a page or two, surfeited with my own fustian. I had nothing but that simple drawing in my head. Jack in the autoclave. The story languished while I wrote a film and a half-dozen TV scripts and two dozen stories and uncountable articles, reviews, criticisms, introductions, and edited this book. (For those who think a writer is someone who gets his name on books, let me assure you
that
is an "author." A "writer" is the hapless devil who cannot keep himself from putting every vagrant thought he has ever had down on paper. I am a writer. I write. That's what I do. I do a lot of it.) The story gathered dust.

But a writer I once admired very much had told me that a "writer's slump" might very well not be a slump at all, but a transitional period. A plateau period in which his style, his views and his interests might be altering. I've found this to be true. Story ideas I've gotten that have not been able to be written, I've let sit. For years. And then, one day, as if magically, I leap on the snippet of story and start over and it gets itself written in hours. Unconsciously I had been working and working that story in my mind during the years in which other work had claimed me consciously. In my Writer's Brain I knew I simply did not have the skill or insight to do the story I wanted to do, and had I bulled through (as I did when I was much younger and needed to
get it all said
), I would have produced a half-witted, half-codified story.

This was precisely the case with "The Prowler." As the months passed, I realized what I was trying to do was say something about the boundaries and dimensions of evil in a total society. It was not merely the story of Jack, it was the story of the effects on evil,
per se
, of an evil culture.

It was becoming heady stuff. So I realized I could not write it from just the scant information on Jack I could recall from Bloch's "Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper," or from an E. Haldeman-Julius "Little Blue Book" I had read in junior high school, or even from the passing references, by Alan Hynd and by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes in
The Lodger
, I had encountered. I suddenly had a project on my hands. The integrity of the story demanded I do my homework.

So I read everything I could lay my hands on. I scoured the book-stores and the libraries for source books on Jack. And in this respect, I must express my gratitude and pleasure for the books by Tom A. Cullen, Donald McCormick, Leonard P. Matters and
The Harlot Killer
, edited by Allan Barnard, which only served to fire my curiosity about this incredible creature known as Jack.

I was hooked. I read ceaselessly about the slayings. And without my even knowing it, I began to form my own conclusions as to who Jack might have been.

The concept of the "invisible killer"—an assassin who could be seen near the site of a crime and not be considered a suspect—stuck with me. The audacity of the crimes and their relatively open nature—in streets and courts and alleys—seemed to insist that an "invisible killer" was my man. Invisible? Why, consider, in Victorian London, a policeman would be invisible, a midwife would be invisible, and . . .a clergyman would be invisible.

The way in which the poor harlots were butchered indicated two things to me: a man obviously familiar with surgical technique, and a man addicted to the concept of femininity prevalent at the time.

But most of all, the pattern and manner of the crimes suggested to me—over and above the obvious derangement of the assassin—that the clergyman/butcher was trying to make a statement. A grisly and quite mad statement, to be sure. But a statement, nonetheless.

So I continued my reading with these related facts in mind. And everywhere I read, the name of the Reverend Samuel Barnett appeared with regularity. He was a socially conscious man who lived in the general area, at Toynbee Hall. And his wife had circulated the petition to Queen Victoria. He had the right kind of background, he certainly had the religious fervor to want to see the slums cleared at almost any cost.

My mind bridged the gap. If not Barnett—to which statement, even in fiction, about a man long since dead, would be attached the dangers of libel and slander—then someone close to Barnett. A younger man, perhaps. And from one concept to another the theory worked itself out, till I had in my Writer's Brain a portrait of exactly who Jack the Ripper was and what his motives had been.

(I was gratified personally to read Tom Cullen's book on the Ripper, after this theory had been established in my mind, and find that in many ways—though not as completely or to the same suspect—he had attached the same drives to
his
Ripper as I to mine.)

Now began a period of writing that stretched out over many weeks. This was one of the hardest stories I ever wrote. I was furious at the limitations of the printed page, the line-for-line rigidity of QWERTYUIOP. I wanted to break out, and the best I could do was use typographical tricks, which are in the final analysis little more than tricks. There must be some way a writer can write a book that has all the visual and sensory impact of a movie!

In any case, my story is now told.

The Jack I present is the Jack in all of us, of course. The Jack that tells us to stand and watch as a Catherine Genovese gets knifed, the Jack that condones Vietnam because we don't care to get involved, the Jack that we need. We are a culture that needs its monsters.

We have to deify our Al Capones, our Billy the Kids, our Jesse Jameses, and all the others including Jack Ruby, General Walker, Adolf Hitler and even Richard Speck, whose Ripper-like butchery of the Chicago nurses has already begun to be thought of as modern legend.

We are a culture that
creates
its killers and its monsters and then provides for them the one thing Jack was never able to have: reality. He was a doomed man who wanted desperately to be recognized for what he had done (as consider the notes he wrote), but could not come out in the open for fear of capture. The torn-in-two-directions of a man who senses that the mob will revere him, even as they kill him.

That is the message of the story.
You
are the monsters.

Brian Aldiss is an English fellah who won a Hugo for his
Hothouse
series a few years back, and a Nebula last year for "The Saliva Tree" (in a tie) for best novella. He also did this novel called
The Dark Light-Years
which was all about shit. Now
that
is what I call a dangerous vision.

He lives in Oxford, England. He was born August 18, 1925, in East Dereham, Norfolk. He submits he has no religion, and he is divorced and now remarried to Margaret (I am told), a delightful and charming girl.

Aldiss books include
Starship, Hothouse, Greybeard, Who Can Replace a Man?, Earthworks
and he is co-editor (with Harry Harrison) of
Nebula Awards Two
. He is also, incidentally, literary editor of the Oxford
Mail
. He was Guest of Honor at the 23rd World Science Fiction Convention, held in London in August 1965.

As editor of this anthology, I knew very little about Aldiss save that I admired his writing and wanted a story by him within these covers. Having received, read and purchased the off-center item that follows, I feel my responsibility in the matter is at an end. I will, therefore, allow Mr. Aldiss (pronounced
Old-iss
) to speak his piece unfootnoted:

"Born in 1925, I can recall being taken to school—kindergarten—past rows of unemployed waiting for the dole, my nurse being very scared of them. That would be the great depression.

"I began writing almost as soon as I could read and have really never stopped. Wrote science fiction at the age of six before I knew what it was all about; wrote pornography at boarding school before I knew what it was all about! Spent four years in the armed forces (1943—47), being just old enough to be sent out to Burma on active service and see a little of the Japanese war. These adolescent years made a great impression—I saw India, Burma, Assam, Ceylon, Sumatra, Malaya, Hong Kong.

"After all that, I didn't want to do anything; I never have, except live and write. I drifted into bookselling, thinking that at least it would give me a chance to read. After a while I stopped private writing and tried to write for a public. It worked. I threw up bookselling. My writing career has been happy and widened my horizons and brought me in touch with many pleasant and interesting people. In this respect, I have been tremendously fortunate. My ill-luck came in my marriage, a battle that lasted some fifteen years—but that's over now and I'm happily remarried.

"In England, I am very well known, billed on my latest paperback as 'Britain's Premier Science Fiction Author'—it may not be accurate but it certainly rattles the opposition! Within the small field, I am very versatile, writing novels and short stories of different kinds, producing anthologies (the three I did for Penguin Books are still selling like hot cakes), appearing at conventions and on literary panels and on TV and radio. I also edit with Harry Harrison, a magazine devoted purely to s-f lit crit:
SF Horizons
.

"In 1964, with my marriage at an impasse, I bought a secondhand Land Rover and drove off to Yugoslavia for six months, travelling round, especially down in the south, Macedonia and all that. A book has come out of the experience. In time, I hope to cover all the other ex-Byzantine states. And I like travelling in Communist countries—the fact that when the chips are down they are on the other side of the fence gives life a mild frisson. Not that the Yugoslavs weren't pleasant.

"I still am a man without ambition—except one; I know I am the world's best s-f writer; I want others to know it too!"

The dentist bowed her smiling to the door, dialling a cab for her as he went. It alighted on the balcony as she emerged.

It was a non-automatic type, old-fashioned enough to be considered chic. Fifi Fevertrees smiled dazzlingly at the driver and climbed in.

"Extra-city service," she said. "The village of Rouseville, off Route Z4."

"You live in the country, huh?" said the cab driver, sailing up into the pseudo-blue, and steering like a madman with one foot.

"The country's okay," Fifi said defensively. She hesitated and then decided she could allow herself to boast. "Besides, it's even better now they got the time mains out there. We're just being connected to the time main at our house—it should be finished when I get home."

"The cabby shrugged. "Reckon it's costly out in the country."

"Three payts a basic unit."

He whistled significantly.

She wanted to tell him more, wanted to tell him how excited she was, how she wished daddy was alive to experience the fun of being on the time main. But it was difficult to say anything with a thumb in her mouth, as she looked into her wrist mirror and probed to see what the dentist had done to her.

He'd done a good job. The new little pearly tooth was already growing firmly in the pink gum. Fifi decided she had a very sexy mouth, just as Tracey said. And the dentist had removed the old tooth by time gas. So simple. Just a whiff of it and she was back in the day before yesterday, reliving that peasant little interlude when she had taken coffee with Peggy Hackenson, with not a thought of any pain. Time gas was so smart these days. She positively glowed to think they would have it themselves, on tap all the while.

The bubble cab soared up and out of one of the dilating ports of the great dome that covered the city. Fifi felt a momentary sorrow at leaving. The cities were so pleasant nowadays that nobody wished to live outside them. Everything was double as expensive outside, too, but fortunately the government paid a hardship allowance for anyone like the Fevertrees, who had to live in the country.