THE RULE OF THE DOOR
AND OTHER FANCIFUL REGULATIONS
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
Edited by Kenneth Lloyd Biggle
Special thanks to David Datta for his computer skills
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1967 by Lloyd Biggie, Jr.
THE RULE OF THE DOOR: first published in Galaxy Science Fiction. February 1958. Copyright © 1957 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. PETTY LARCENY: first published in Satellite Science Fiction, August 1958. Copyright © by Lloyd BiggLe, Jr. ON THE DOTTED LINE: first published in If Worlds of Science Fiction, June 1957. Copyright © 1957 by Quinn Publishing Company, Inc. JUDGEMENT DAY: first published in Fantastic Universe Science Fiction. April 1958. Copyright © by King-Size Publications, Inc. SECRET WEAPON: first published in Galaxy Science Fiction. May 1958, as “Bridle Shower.” Copyright © 1958 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. THE PERFECT PUNISHMENT: first published in Worlds of Tomorrow. March 1965, as “Pariah Planet.” Copyright © 1965 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. A SLIGHT CASE OF LIMBO: first published in Analog, April 1963. Included in THE NINTH ANNUAL OF THE YEAR’S BEST SF, edited by Judith Merril (Simon & Schuster, 1964). Copyright © 1963 by Conde Nast Publications, Inc. D.F.C.: first published in If Worlds of Science Fiction, February 1957, as “Cronus of the D.F.C.” Published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 1966, as “Department of Future Crime.” Copyright © 1956 by Quinn Publishing Company, Inc. WINGS OF SONG: first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1963. Copyright © 1963 by Mercury Press, Inc.
INTRODUCTION, by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
Early in his conscious existence man began to wonder.
The small world he inhabited was besieged by massive unknowns: the hills on the horizon, the foreboding shapes of primeval forests, that unutterable mother of mysteries, the sea. Fearfully he asked himself what lay beyond, and what would happen to him if he went there—or if whatever was there came to him.
Eventually he went and did not believe what he found, for until quite late in his history man’s wonderings were far more puissant than the realities that confronted them; and whenever he surmounted a barrier another lay on the horizon—to be wondered about.
His awakening consciousness began to probe other barriers: what lay beyond tomorrow? Or beyond the stars? Or beyond life?
As with most human endeavors there were men who specialized in wondering and became professionals. Today some of them write Science Fiction.
That term has been examined semantically and found wanting, for it links a word referring to objectivity, systematized knowledge, factuality, and—ultimately—truth, with one meaning the opposite, something feigned or imagined; but science devoid of imagination has fostered more false doctrine than all of the purposeful fictions ever spun. Science Fiction combines man’s most venerable literature with his most modern; his hereditary awe of the unknown and his compulsion to wonder about it with speculation concerning the fearsome power science has given to him to shape his own destiny—or destroy it.
Primitive man inhabited a terrifying world where even a faint breeze was a question mark and a slash of lightning a stroke of doom. He did not think of his wonderings as Science Fiction, but they were. Man inevitably speculates about the unknown in terms of the known, and the word “science” originally meant “knowledge.” Throughout human history every age has produced a “science fiction” that reflected its own technology and scientific thought.
Primitive man peopled his wonderings with spirits; the ancient Greeks, with gods. Only to later men were such tales superstitions and myths. Homer’s audiences accepted his epics as history, and to a surprising extent they were; but they were also the “science fiction” of that age, the realization of man’s wonderings in terms of his understanding of his environment some eight hundred years before Christ.
Several major themes of today’s Science Fiction have an unbroken development from man’s earliest wonderings, with deep roots in his most ancient folklore and myths. The fantastic journey must have fascinated man long before Ulysses’s epic tour of Mediterranean wonders. It still fascinates, whether through the voids of space or the recent Fantastic Voyage through a human body. The amazing creatures described in travel stories of the past are in their way quite as remarkable as the fabricated bug-eyed monsters that populate remote worlds in today’s Science Fiction. Lost, or unknown, or undiscovered tribes, races, civilizations, continents, worlds have occupied man’s wonderings since he first projected his imagination beyond the horizon. The archetypal utopia was doubtless dreamed during a period of overpopulation and cave shortages in the Pleistocene, the interplanetary romance is no more modern than the second century A.D., and visitors from outer space have a venerable history. The artificial man, or robot, was already present in myths concerning ancient Crete.
There are significant differences between today’s Science Fiction and the “science fiction” of earlier times, and two of them may be seen in the use of the words “science” and “fiction.” Changes in science and technology have wrought changes in man’s wonderings, and changes in literature have affected the forms in which they are expressed. The gradual emergence of fiction as a respectable literary medium relieved writers of the necessity of presenting speculative literature as true experience (though the practice will certainly endure as long as there is a gullible public susceptible of hoaxing for fun or profit). Man’s wonderings were cast in the form of fiction at least as early as Aristophanes, however. A Science Fiction scientifically oriented in the modern sense was not possible before the tremendous scientific and technological advances of the nineteenth century, and because these transformed the human environment within the scope of a man’s lifetime and so obviously presaged a continuing, accelerating progress, they made possible new dimensions in wondering. The prophets of other ages sought the future in the stars, or in sacrificial divinations, or in drug-induced dreams; the modern prophet consults technical journals and his slide rule. For the first time in human history it has seemed possible to calculate the future.
Finally, today’s Science Fiction reflects modern man’s widening horizons. Homer’s Mediterranean world could encompass the wonderings of two epics; but men went out to Homer’s horizons and to the horizons beyond, and the blank spaces on the maps of the Earth were gradually filled in. Even on this shrunken planet there is still room enough in which to wonder, and writers who do so continue to discover unknown worlds: A. Conan Doyle’s South American The Lost World and James Hilton’s Himalayan Lost Horizon, to name only two twentieth-century examples. Others have been glimpsed in such unlikely locations as down a rabbit hole, with Alice.
But increasingly man has turned his attention outward and inward. On the one hand the space sciences, and on the other such developing sciences as psychiatry, psychology, and sociology probe today’s ultimate barriers: outer space and man himself. In the past three thousand years man has explored a world and discovered two universes—one in the sky and the other in his own mind. Today he wonders; tomorrow, give or take a few millennia, he will know, but long before then he will have sighted new horizons.
To wonder about.
THE RULE OF THE DOOR
Professor Skarn Skukarn twisted abruptly on the billowy expanse of his bed and sat up. A glance at the pink-tinted indicator told him that the Time of Sleep was no more than half expired. He stretched himself, indulged in a leisurely yawn, rubbed his eyes.
“Strange,” he murmured. “Perhaps it was that sliff I had for dinner.”
He immediately rejected this idea as an assumption unworthy of a distinguished psychologist and padded softly into his laboratory. His lecture notes lay stacked neatly on his desk. He thumbed through the metallic sheets, mildly surprised that he felt no trace of fatigue. His mind was alert; his ideas flowed with sparkling clarity. For a moment he hesitated, thoughtfully gazing at his notes, and then he slipped into his flowing professorial gown and mounted the incongruously ornate lectern that stood in one corner of the laboratory. Smiling faintly, he pressed a button and waited.
Throughout the length and breadth of the great university city of Kuln, oaths and screams of dismay