"When the People Fell" is a
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
short story by American writer
Cordwainer Smith
Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (July 11, 1913 – August 6, 1966), better known by his pen-name Cordwainer Smith, was an American author known for his science fiction works. Linebarger was a US Army officer, a noted East Asia scholar, and a ...
, set in his "
Instrumentality" universe. It was originally published in
Galaxy Science Fiction
''Galaxy Science Fiction'' was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published in Boston from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by a French-Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break into the American market. World Editi ...
magazine in April, 1959, and is collected in ''
The Rediscovery of Man
''The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith'' () is a 1993 book containing the complete collected short fiction of American science fiction author Cordwainer Smith. It was edited by James A. Mann and published b ...
'', and in the collection of which it is the title story. The story takes place relatively early in the Instrumentality timeline, and a "scanner Vomact" appears both in this story and the classic story "
Scanners Live in Vain
"Scanners Live in Vain" is a science fiction short story by American writer Cordwainer Smith ( pen name of American writer Paul Linebarger). It was the first story in Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind future history to be published and the first ...
".
The story recounts, in "flashback" form — an interview between a reporter and a crusty old-timer — a risky attempt by a future Chinese government to claim and settle the planet Venus, at a time when China is the only ethnic nation on Earth which has survived as a separate entity through a global nuclear war and a long dark age which followed. The story implicitly compares Western and Chinese approaches to solving an impossible problem and has the Chinese solution succeed, but at a cost Westerners would find repugnant.
Plot summary
The setting is the type of
benign Venus imagined before the first space probes penetrated the clouds of that planet. Colonization has become stymied by the native inhabitants (loudies), who are apparently sentient bubbles that float around the landscape, getting in the way of human progress. Attempts to communicate with them produce no response. Confining them is useless (they drift back) and killing them produces a deadly explosion that contaminates a thousand acres (4 km²). The non-Chinese authorities of the early Instrumentality government have no answer.
The ruler of Goonhogo (the entity that replaced China under the early Instrumentality) decrees that 82 million Chinesians (men, women, and children) be dropped from space, parachuting down to the surface. Each one has a simple mission — herd the bubbles together. Many die in the process, both in landing and from the bubbles exploding. The rest corralled the loudies together into herds, where they eventually starve, wiping out the species. Meanwhile, more Chinese parachute down with rice seeds and begin planting. Eventually, by sheer weight of numbers, the Chinese conquer Venus.
Smith's point in the story is evidently to demonstrate how Chinese attitudes such as fatalism and obedience to authority, coupled with their large numbers, could outperform the "
Yankee ingenuity
Yankee ingenuity is a self-made stereotype of inventiveness, technical solutions to practical problems, "know-how", self-reliance and individual enterprise associated with the Yankees, who originated in New England and developed much of the indust ...
" and "self-reliant individual" attitudes predominant in mainstream 1950s American
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
of the time. (However, it is implied that the separate Chinese government and Chinese ethnic identity of the time of the Venus colonization no longer exist in the same form by the time of the story's "frame" interview.)
Collection
In 2007,
Baen Books
Baen Books () is an American publishing house for science fiction and fantasy. In science fiction, it emphasizes space opera, hard science fiction, and military science fiction. The company was established in 1983 by science fiction publisher an ...
released a 599-page collection titled ''When the People Fell'' in trade paperback format which contained this short story as well as 28 additional short works by Smith and an introductory essay by
Frederik Pohl
Frederik George Pohl Jr. (; November 26, 1919 – September 2, 2013) was an American science-fiction writer, editor, and fan, with a career spanning nearly 75 years—from his first published work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satelli ...
.
It was re-released in 2012 in mass market paperback form with 848 pages.
All of the story texts in this collection and its companion ''
We, The Underpeople'' are derived from the revised and corrected
NESFA Press
NESFA Press is the publishing arm of the New England Science Fiction Association, Inc. The NESFA Press primarily produces three types of books:
* Books honoring the guest(s) of honor at their annual convention, Boskone, and at some Worldcons and ...
editions of Smith's work in the 1990s.
References
External links
*
* {{isfdb title, id=57052, title=When the People Fell
*
When the People Fell at the
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
Short stories by Cordwainer Smith
1959 short stories
Works originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction