Cyanide
One of the mainstays of the British magazines throughout the 1950s was Kenneth Bulmer. As a rule Bulmer concentrated on the longer stories, in fact he does not consider himself a short story writer. He prefers the length of a novel which allows him space to develop his characters and his often bizarre themes.
Henry Kenneth Bulmer was born in London on January 14th, 1921, and was an avid sf fan from his early days producing seven issues of his own fanzine Star Parade during 1941. Then Bulmer became entangled in the war, in the Royal Corps of Signals, but afterwards returned to the sf fold. After an apprenticeship on the Panther series of sf novels for Hamilton’s, Bulmer sold a short story, First Down, to Authentic and it appeared in the April 1954 issue. Thereafter he appeared regularly in the magazines, under his own name and a few aliases like Nelson Sherwood and H Philip Stratford. Also he collaborated on scientific articles with research chemist John Newman under the name Kenneth Johns.
In 1970 Bulmer edited a fantasy companion magazine to Vision of Tomorrow, called Sword and Sorcery, but after two issues were set in type the magazine was aborted because of the crippling distribution problems which also killed Vision. Most of the unused material was snapped up by other magazines and the experience stood Bulmer in good stead. Today he successfully edits the original anthology series New Writings in SF, which he took over after John Carnell’s death in 1972.
Readers of New Writings 24 will have noticed Ken Bulmer drew attention to a story Advertise Your Cyanide in his introduction. That story first appeared in the April 1958 Nebula, a magazine edited and published single-handedly by Glasgow fan Peter Hamilton. The drive and tenacity of Hamilton produced a highly memorable and exciting (if amateurish looking) magazine that often contained superior fiction to New Worlds and the other publications. Hamilton produced the magazine frequently if sometimes erratically, from 1952 to 1959 when, after 41
issues, everything finally became too much. Thereupon Hamilton disappeared from the scene, and I sincerely hope that if he is reading this he will contact me. Nebula is a suitable monument to the memory of what one man can do for science fiction and it is fitting that its shade should be invoked by Advertise Your Cyanide, undoubtedly one of the finest stories it ever published.
Ken Bulmer had the following to relate about the tale:
‘The origins of this story may be traced back to Manhattan and a New York newspaper. It is one of the results of the USA’s sledgehammer effect on my sensibilities. In addition the disquieting facts being turned up during the course of my work as ‘Kenneth Johns’ gave the background story to the foreground action racketing away. The newspaper claimed that as so many million more mouths would have to be fed, and bodies clothed and housed and provided with wheels, in the near future, mammoth building programmes were under way for the wholesale production of every conceivable product. The disquieting facts were showing that there was a limit to certain commodities.
‘All this now screeches at us from every form of media, and in fact has almost been oversold. Back twenty years it was not fashionable.
‘The form of the story is presented in a way that is now remarkably familiar to the many New Wave stories of a few years ago. This presentation was a conscious attempt, given that form and content are indivisible, to make the form work hard and punch home the content. The story was written in 1955 and took some time to sell. I concur with the preceding remarks about Nebula. One reader wrote to Peter Hamilton saying I was either a madman or a genius. Peter was considerate in his reply. Now, in these latter days, the form as well as the content has perhaps been oversold.
‘One final thing: Advertise Your Cyanide - there may be a sequel one day called Hoard Your Psionide - remains firmly in the sf canon. It deals with specific problems that are within the province of sf. I also write funny stories, too. You may find many rewarding stories covering the whole gamut of sf within the pages of New Writings in SF. I like to think, had I been editing NWinSF then, I’d have had Peter Hamilton’s courage and accepted Advertise Your Cyanide.
* * * *
ADVERTISE YOUR CYANIDE
Kenneth Bulmer
Time: 2100.
The porage flooded into his forearm vein with its usual high-kick bloating impact. That was better! Now he could hit the sky! The needle dangled from his fingers.
Consider this man.
Index: T/A/77894S.
Name: Spencer Lord.
Age: 32. Height: 179 cms. Hair: Black. Eyes: Brown. Ex-Captain Terran Space Force. Athletic. First class shot. Twice wounded. Decorations: Gold Star, Space Cross. Security Risk Rating AAA. Terran Secret Service Operative.
The paper was yellow, thin, official. You ate it when you’d read it.
From: Security Bureau.
To: Op.K.2.
Subject: Sahndran Ambassador. Coverage and Protection Advert. Convention.
You will protect the life of His Excellency Josiah Gosheron at all times during the convention. His Excellency must not rpt not be aware of this protection. You will rpt will consider yourself expendable.
Bolz.
Lord put the needle back into its nest and thrust the plastic case on to the dressing table. The lightning pulsing through his body ironed out the shivers. He ate the yellow message form.
STAB WITH ME,
JAB WITH ME,
COME ON, BABY, GRAB WITH ME!
Lord blinked, pulled on his weapons belt, adjusted his anti-grav and flung his huge synthiermine cape over one arm. His stiff, jewelled guantlets snapped magnetically to the over-cape’s garish hem, ready for use. Expendable, huh? So he was supposed to worry?
He opened the window.
Predatory jungle of light and noise and smell. Neons and lumivapour writhing intestinal convulsions across a slate dinosaur-back horizon. Inside out. Screeching beast-hum of the city; pulsing colour and movement; insistent scraping at nerves deadened and excrutiatingly excited by drugs in pain-pleasure cycles.
The world of logical licence. Culture-arid. Scrabbling up a side-avenue of time, self-consciously aware of know-how, worshipping it, refusing to face life and hurrying helter-skelter into experience
SCOOT WITH ME ON MY ATOMIC-SLED,
ROOT AND TOOT AND SLIDE TO BED!
Consider the past years.
The middle period of the twentieth century put the waste of the planet’s resources on an organised footing. By that time America had used up in the preceding half-century more raw materials than had all of recorded history. One family - two cars. A spoonful of coffee - use a tree trunk to wrap it. A pack of cigarettes - use two tree trunks. Smooch in the Drive-In - burn a few gallons of gas, they’re cheap. Mine the iron, mine the rare metals, process them, turn them into guns and planes and tanks. Let them rust into red wasteful ruin. Cut those trees, men; dig that ore. We won’t freeze, men; there’s plenty more.
Only there wasn’t.
Lord stepped smartly off the windowsill, dropped a sheer hundred stories, then activated his anti-grav belt and swept up and away, relishing that first delirious plunge. He headed over the scarlet-lipped neon of a nude a block wide. She puffed smoke in sulphurous clouds, perfect ring after perfect ring. Her wooden framework was half charred away.
CLEAR THAT BLOCK AND BE A CLEAR,
BLOCK THAT CLEAR AND BE A DEAR.
Cut through the ring of smoke like a shot from a gun in Security HQ target range, spurn that dust, hit the clouds. His Excellency Josiah Gosheron. He savoured the name sourly. The damned old Terran hater. Another all night assignment and Katy on the loose. This convention promised to be dull, too - until you thought about it.
He was speeding above the city now, the wind slapping at his stator field and rushing past his ears. Other citizens sliced across on the downtown levels. Their lights were like frenetic dances of doom, writhing before some obscene idol in a torch-lit temple. Which reminded him of Katy.
She might make it to the convention, she’d said. She might be tippling with some half-crazy spacemen. She might be parading that body of hers on tridi. She might be doing anything. Lord bet a million credits she wasn’t thinking of him. The knowledge was an ice-barb in his guts.
Time: 2114.
He slanted in towards the hotel rooftop, where uniformed lackeys stood with magnetoclamps, waiting for outer clothing and hand luggage from guests.
All across the horizon in an unvarying arc marched the squat gloomy bulks of the accumulator stations, waiting insatiably for the energy to quench their bottomless thirst. Now they were giving of their stored wealth, providing the sustenance for a night’s squandering. Lord angled his downward plunge to miss the stacked solar mirrors on the hotel’s roof and hoped that tomorrow would be fine: the city’s power supply was down to danger level and if storm clouds banked heavily tomorrow it might cost more in weather control than would be got out of the sun when it reluctantly appeared.
His feet hit the wooden roof with a jolt. Damn porage wasn’t spreading evenly yet: his reflexes were still slightly out of skew. If Katy was here he’d find her. Gosheron permitting. Lord began to walk across the roof towards the attendants.
Get the old Terran hater drunk; that was the idea. Souse him, douse him, light and louse him. Lord smiled and flung his cape at the attendants. His fingers twitched. He needed a drink.
HIT THAT SYNAPSE WITH A WHIZ,