“Rival of Mars” by David Walton
“Nigerian Scam” by Richard A. Lovett
“From Wayfield, From Malagasy” by Robert J. Howe
Ben Bova‘s "Takes Two to Tangle" centers on particle physicist, Dr. Daniel Townes of Selene University, who is talked into building a "matter transmitter," a teletransportation device by "freewheeling" businessman Sam Gunn, just returned from an expedition to the Kuiper Belt. In this instance, Bova exploits the familiarity of the science-fiction teleporter for comic effect, with a consideration of some of the religious, financial and political implications such a device might have smoothly woven into the narrative.
Other aspects of the story are not so smoothly written. Gunn comes off as a bit of a cliché—the scrappy, pint-sized, fast-talking hustler just one step ahead of his creditors. The likeability that Gunn was presumably supposed to have in spite of his obnoxiousness isn’t really in evidence, and while Dr. Townes, in narrating the tale, tells us that Sam has a "heart as big as a spiral galaxy," we just have to take his word for it. In the end, he will likely annoy far more readers than he charms. Meanwhile, Daniel comes off as bland as Sam is irritating.
Instead of characterization, concept prevails, and fortunately, Bova’s handling of it is solid. The moon’s underground cities are credible. Some of the consequences of building the teleporter are familiar, like the risk of its creating multiple copies of the same person, but others are more novel, like its use to break through currency controls, and the role of the New Lunar Church offers an interesting twist.
In the future detailed by David Walton’s “Rival of Mars,” recreational drug use has caused an epidemic of birth defects. As a result, pregnancy is now licensed, and typically conducted by surrogates hired through an agency (a position for which one in a hundred women qualify). The story focuses on one such woman, Angie, whose pregnancy is witnessed through the eyes of her boyfriend, an aerospace engineer preoccupied with an upcoming mission to Mars—and finding himself torn between love and career.
The licensing of pregnancy is of course an old theme in science fiction, and Walton’s explanation of how the situation came about is not particularly convincing. The "thousands of birth defects" to which Angie refers seem unlikely to produce the mandatory birth control of the Family Freedom Act, the other justifications (eliminating guardianship conflicts, simplifying divorce, freeing women for careers, etc.) clearly an afterthought, even if regarded by some as bonuses.
Of course, political overreaction to such a crisis is not inconceivable, but there are other problems as well. For instance, Walton never explains the criteria of those who license the relative handful of women permitted to carry babies to term. At the same time, no concern is expressed about the demographic consequences (or motivations?) of such a situation. This may or may not be a convenient way of sidestepping the ethical stickiness of such policies.
Fortunately, the reason for the licensing is just a prop to set up the real story, Angie’s pregnancy, and the tale’s strength is the way that it makes a familiar event alien through a changed perspective and selectively altered details. Additionally, while the narrator’s decision about his personal dilemma is unlikely to surprise anyone, it is written with appropriate care and gravity.
Like Bova’s story, Richard A. Lovett’s "Nigerian Scam" looks to familiar science fiction conventions for comedic value, with the launch pad the spam email now familiar to anyone who has ever had an account. In this instance, the email’s senders claim to be aliens from the Outer Vegan Information Consortium. The protagonist, Ryan Mann, a bicyclist recovering from a racing injury, decides to play along with the email in his boredom, setting in motion the events of this slight but moderately entertaining tale.
The final story, Robert J. Howe’s “From Wayfield, From Malagasy,” tells the tale of Captain Wayfield of the starship Malagasy and his crew, who are stranded among a culture that reminded this reviewer of Colin Turnbull’s infamous characterization of the Ugandan Ik. The adults each have their own small homes, the children are totally cut off from their parents on attaining maturity, and there is no trade or communal sharing, the very concepts alien to the natives. There is a fundamental difference, however. Where the image Turnbull presented of the Ik is one of a society which has become as atomized as is conceivable without completely disintegrating, the natives Captain Wayfield’s people encounter have instead taken "self-sufficiency to ridiculous extremes"—perhaps due to their arrival in a botched attempt at colonization. The core of the story is the dilemma Wayfield faces in his dealings with them while attempting to keep his crew alive long enough to be rescued.
In setting up the clash, the author naturally needs a way around the problem of communication between two cultures previously unknown to each other, and he finds it in the intriguing plot device of "Neotenic Linguistic Plasticity," a genetic mutation the planet’s natives have that enables adults to organically pick up a language with the same ease as infants. Other, crucial aspects of the situation are less clear (a little more explanation of the logic of the natives in taking any kind of collective action would have been welcome) but the story holds together well despite that, the key shift at the conclusion appropriately subtle given the wildly differing value systems which meet on this planet.