Caution! Inflammable!

by Thomas N. Scortia

20 short odd stories of fantasy, horror and dark speculations, shivery, and grotesque visions of the future. A towering vision of the future. Judas Fish: Is it true that "we are what we eat?" A man enjoys a rare delicacy-an unusual species of giant squid-and becomes one with their advanced communal intelligence. Woman's rib: Her was the perfect lover...after all, she planned him that way! The bomb in the bathtub: It was an obstinate nuke-with a penchant for wild gambling and singing popular songs. By the time I get to Phoenix: For the extraordinary woman he rescued from the desert, each act of love meant years off her life. Mortality: They feared him as a monster and kept him in a winding dungeon. Yet his superior intelligence gave them their power, their very existence.
Contents:
Introduction (Caution! Inflammable!) (1975) • essay by Theodore Sturgeon
Caution! Inflammable! (1955) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
Sea Change (1956) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
Though a Sparrow Fall (1965) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
John Robert and the Dragon's Egg (1957) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia (variant of John Robert and the Egg)
The Last War (1975) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
When You Hear the Tone (1971) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
Woman's Rib (1972) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
Morality (1969) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
The Worm in the Rose (1972) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
Flowering Narcissus (1973) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
The Icebox Blonde (1959) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
The Bomb in the Bathtub (1957) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
Judas Fish (1970) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
Fall Out One (1972) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
By the Time I Get to Phoenix (1972) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
Gee, Wurlitzer! It's a Dad! (1971) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
Old, Old Death in New, New Venice (1975) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
The Premier's Lady (1975) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
The Goddess of the Cats (1973) / short story by Thomas N. Scortia
The Weariest River (1973) / novelette by Thomas N. Scortia
.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Thomas Nicholas Scortia was a science fiction author. He worked in the American aerospace industry until the late 1960s/early 1970s. He collaborated on several works with fellow author Frank M. Robinson. He sometimes used the pseudonyms Scott Nichols, Gerald MacDow, and Arthur R. Kurtz.

Scortia was born in Alton, Illinois. He attended Washington University in St. Louis, where he earned a degree in chemistry in 1949. He worked for a number of aerospace companies during the 1950s and 1960s, and held a patent for the fuel used by one of the Jupiter fly-by missions.

Scortia had been writing in his spare time while still working in the aerospace field. When the industry began to see increased unemployment in the early 1970s, Scortia decided to try his hand at full-time writing. His first novel, The Glass Inferno (in collaboration with Frank M. Robinson) was the inspiration for the 1974 film The Towering Inferno. Scortia also collaborated with Dalton Trumbo on the novel The Endangered Species.

Scortia died of leukemia in La Verne, California on April 29, 1986.

Reviews

[Alex Kuzel]

I believe I acquired this book 2 years ago, while waiting for my car's windshield to be replaced and browsing a used book rack in the corner of the comic shop next door, finding this and another similar book or two underneath a mountain of Star Wars X-Wing novels. I think I'm pleased by how few ratings/reviews this has; not because I'm going to gatekeep Thomas Scortia (whose sparse Wikipedia page seems to exclusively contain information from this book's introduction) but because I can shout into the void a little more carelessly in this review.

I still love short story collections (even if I'm generally not a fan of this one). This is old sci-fi from the 50's through 70's, back when the genre was referred to as SF, and reading Theodore Sturgeon's introduction gave me an irregular feeling of nostalgia. Several of these stories aren't really SF or Fantasy, which is fine. There really is a wide swath of subject matter here, much more diverse than what Edgar Allen Poe was writing (which I mention because that was the most recent anthology I've read).

One of my biggest gripes here is that pretty much all of the stories in this book feel like rough ideas, or the preludes to actual stories. Short stories can still be complete narratives, but I generally felt like things weren't developed enough to really affect me in any way. My other primary turn-off for this book was the unbelievably gross and creepy descriptions of bodies throughout (both male and female). Much of this IS the "men writing women" phenomenon, where the topography of women's breasts is given such focus that it's forgotten to give names to the owners of those breasts, but there's a whole lot of talk of oiled and muscled backs, thighs, and buttocks (of all genders). If the book were relentlessly horny I think I could forgive these choices in diction, but my reading is much more "no human being would ever speak like this".

An anti-favorite from page 159 reads: "Her body felt oddly articulated in his arms, but her odor was undeniably female, with a clean, woman fragrance uncluttered by the powders and perfumes he had always despised in the women he had known. It was at this point that he noticed the lower part of her body. It was quite featureless. The genital area was completely smooth, completely asexual.". In contrast (in the sense I think this one is funny), a different story uses the phrase "making sex" in total sincerity. As I said up top, this is a niche book/author and I doubt any Thomas Scotia fans will be coming after me on goodreads for slander, but I'll say what I said about the Poe story collection: a nice part about reading stories from the same author is seeing the common threads; one creepy story might indicate an intentionally unreliable narrator, but it says something else if every story features a weird pervert.

For some reason, I have an optimistic takeaway from that above paragraph, in that this era of fiction was only 50-70 years ago and the media landscape has changed so drastically. I think it's still uncomfortable to look at unsavory views from the 20th century and realize those people and their audiences are still around today; but like, the state of popular literature feels like it has gotten so much more welcoming and less gross in the past 50 years than it has in the 2000 years prior. And I don't know, as much misplaced nostalgia as I have for the weirdness of 1970's SF, I'm really happy walking into a Barnes & Noble and seeing what "the kids" are reading these days. Again, I'm not out to witch-hunt a random author of pulp fantasy, just that reading 20 stories of women described like sexy furniture has got me thinking about broader concepts in the world.

Back to this book, and to things I liked, I think the final story "The Weariest River" is a standout work, and would recommend all curious to skip to that one. Perhaps it's because its the longest of these short stories, but this has the most realized and interesting premise, of an almost Cyberpunk dystopian future of corporate-issued immortality, psychedelic trances, insurgent gang warfare and BDSM for the elderly. For once, the focus on sex feels fitting of the strange apocalypse our characters find themselves in, and there feels to be more societal critique and speculation than the other stories. Not perfect, but a fun read.

Alternatively, "The Worm in the Rose" is a quick story about how gay bathroom hookups will get you arrested. No aliens, no technological dystopia, just "if you give into gay impulses for one second you've damned your life forever". Not great!

Thank you for reading my more casual review! My goal this year has been to read the unread books I physically own so I can donate them, and I say with no sarcasm that Caution! Inflammable! broadened my horizons as a reader. This book felt like such a rare find that I would almost hesitate to donate it to a stranger (library, thriftbooks, local book store etc). If you know me in real life and want this book I would love nothing more than to sent it to you in the mail. Message me! :)

[Gingaeru · Rating 2 out of 5]

After Sturgeon (who's a favorite of mine) talked Scortia up in the introduction, I'm a bit let down. I don't think I'd previously read any of his work. Most of these stories are very short, and I only really enjoyed one (now I have to keep the entire book for only a handful of pages). He had a sense of humor, but perhaps no taste.

Evidently, no one counseled Scortia on his gross overuse of "demanded." In these 270 pages, he uses "demanded/demands" at least 64 times... To compound this, on almost all of the occasions when characters ask a simple question, it isn't even truly a demand (e.g., "'How are you, old man?' he demanded."). Like most authors, he uses "gleam" too much; things aren't nearly as shiny as they'd have you believe. Other random words are also overused, some less noticeably. He often describes masculine body parts in detail, which adds nothing to the story. Another issue is that the narrative will be perfectly clear (in most stories) up until one randomly vague sentence or small paragraph that fails utterly to communicate the author's vision to the reader. This happens repeatedly, and a few of these particular scenes just happen to be key moments in the stories, which is a shame.

Déjà vu...:
"... a lean man with an appearance of premature withering from too much dieting and too much weight gain that left his face, his arms, and his body an endless corduroy of expansion marks." (p. 183, "Old, Old Death in New, New Venice")
-
"... his belly drooping with the corduroyed ridges of expansion marks where he had gained and lost weight again and again." (p. 246, "The Weariest River")
...

"Caution! Inflammable!" (1954)
5/10
The briefest story here. A dying phoenix with precognitive abilities builds her nest atop a skyscraper while being interviewed by a reporter. At least one reviewer seemed to think it was funny, but the "punchline" was bleak and I didn't get the impression that humor was the author's intention at all. (I felt sick, personally.)
...

"Sea Change" (1956)
5/10
This one was hard to get into. A man who's undergone some sort of cybernetic transformation so he can pilot a certain type of ship attempts to drown his sorrows at a bar while in constant telepathic contact with others like him, including a woman whom he seems to have feelings for. A bit hazy.
-
Use of "demanded": 1
...

"Though a Sparrow Fall" (1965)
4/10
A biochemist who's made a "discovery" takes his sweet time in getting to the point at a dinner party, apparently savoring the crowd's anticipation. Frequent use of "Oh, come now" and "For heaven's sake."
-
Use of "demanded": 1
...

"John Robert and the Dragon's Egg" (1957)
5/10
First of all, the titular John Robert is called only that every time he's mentioned. I can't stand that "Christopher Robin" bullshit. Real people go by only one name, and if I ever meet anyone who insists on being called by both their first and middle names at all times, I'll refuse to oblige them (to say the least). As for the story, a boy and his grandfather surreptitiously care for a dragon's egg, and then the growing dragon, on Uncle Ben's country farm. I was mildly amused by the vocabulary of these country bumpkins, but that wasn't enough to make the read worthwhile.
-
Uses of "demanded": 8 (3 on p. 25) +1 "commanded"
...

"The Last War" (19??)
5/10
An overly prolific race of otter-like extraterrestrials is in desperate need of land to populate. When negotiations for them to be given a portion of Earth go poorly, these seemingly passive aliens have a sinister trick up their sleeve. Like the first story, honestly disturbing.
-
Uses of "demanded": 2 (p. 42)
...

"When You Hear the Tone" (1970)
5/10
A lonely old man attempts to phone his estranged brother but is repeatedly connected with a particular woman during various moments in her past. The calls successively recede further backwards in time. Ultimately, he reaches Alexander Graham Bell, and his hopes are shattered... until he thinks of searching for the woman's name in the directory. Regarding the Graham Bell conversation, according to historical records, his wording was "Mr. Watson, come here—I want to see you!" but the wording in this story, as in that one Doctor Who episode, is "Mr. Watson, come here. I need you." Just another misquote to add to the long list.
-
Uses of "demanded": 2
...

"Woman's Rib" (1972)
3/10
A very gross story about an aging woman who has apparently designed her own boyfriend (somehow). Simultaneously vague and TMI. No thanks.
-
"The coarse black hair between his nipples sprang erect as the towel took its moisture. He rubbed his flanks and his hard indented buttocks. He was, she decided, quite beautiful, beautiful in a full masculine way that still brought a catch to her breath. Everything about him excited her—the muscled belly with its clear definition, the deeply indented pubic fold, his maleness, darker in tone than the rest of the body, but pure and unmottled, springing in easy authority from a patch of the same briskly black hair that washed darkness across his chest."
-
Uses of "demanded": 2 (facing pp. 66, 67)
...

"Morality" (1969)
5.5/10
This one had potential, but its execution was a bit lacking. Essentially, the Minotaur of myth is depicted as a misunderstood telepathic alien who was captured and imprisoned in the labyrinth while searching for a cure for his ailing people. Just one of those hopelessly unfair situations.
...

"The Worm in the Rose" (1972)
3/10
By all appearances, this "story" is a PSA on homosexual shenanigans in public restrooms. Truly bizarre.
...

"Flowering Narcissus" (1973)
4/10
Present tense. A very self-centered macho biker agrees to spend a week asleep for a scientist in exchange for money, but he wakes up not a week, but 115 years and four months later... He's unfortunately the only remaining human on the planet. Androids cater to his every fancy but attempt to pair him with a female clone of himself. This Honcho fella is so awful it's amusing at times, but still awful. He reminds me of Lobo from DC Comics.
-
"Honcho sits up and flexes his biceps. He laughs, feeling the sudden animal pleasure of being alive. The bald gink looks at him with wide eyes. Man, he thinks, ain't you ever seen a guy with a man's build? Then he digs. The gink is looking at him with admiration, and Honcho says to himself, that kind of scene, ugh? Eat your heart out, baby. And he feels damned good."
-
Uses of "[insert character] demands": 9
Uses of "[insert character] wants to know" (after a question is asked): 2 on p. 105
...

"The Icebox Blonde" (1959)
7/10
Unexpectedly hilarious. A no-nonsense British fellow staying in America with his wife becomes gradually more obsessed with the new android women sold in the deep freeze section of the local supermarket, while his wife is wooed by and eventually runs off with a younger man (who's awfully frank about the whole thing).
-
Uses of "demanded": 2
...

"The Bomb in the Bathtub" (1957)
6/10
A private investigator takes on a case in which a man complains there's a sentient bomb from another reality in his bathtub. It's slightly funny.
-
Uses of "demanded": 5
Uses of "gleam": 3
...

"Judas Fish" (1971)
5/10
This story is told through letters and journal entries. A fisherman discovers that a race of sentient squid from another planet is stealing all of his catch during a worldwide famine. Not my cup of tea.
-
Uses of "so much {gook|lark|bulk protein and fat}": 3
Uses of "so many [human lives]": 1
...

"Fall Out One" (1972)
5/10
A mentally challenged young woman kills her babysitter's boyfriend with a pair of scissors one night, and her military father attempts to cover it up in fear of losing his position. (I wish someone would explain the title to me; I can't find any such term outside of the father's sentence in the story.) I liked the brutal tension in this one, but the ending was a bit weak.
-
Uses of "demanded": 4 (2 in one paragraph, p. 155)
Uses of "[insert character] whirled": 1 +1 "whirling"
...

"By the Time I Get to Phoenix" (1972)
3/10
A man whose crotch was vaguely damaged in the past, rendering him unable to copulate, lives alone in the desert. An alien woman crash-lands nearby and, after bringing her home, he learns firsthand that she was designed to sexually satisfy others via their dreams. But doing so causes her to age rapidly. Despite this, the selfish jerk uses her twice more that very night! After which, she wanders off into the desert to die. From her corpse writhes her larval replacement, which the man abandons in repulsion. Stupid..
-
Use of "demanded": 1
Use of "blurted": 1
...

"Gee, Wurlitzer! It's a Dad!" (1971)
?/10
A bit of a moralist suspects his girlfriend of sleeping around. He seeks help from an AI that provides him with two chemical formulas to add to the water supply and slip into his girlfriend's drink, respectively. When every man in town turns blue the following day, he accuses her, but she's somehow disrobed, upon which he also turns blue. He returns to confront the computer, which smugly quotes Matthew 5:28... I think I would've enjoyed it more if his girlfriend's true nature were clearer. The narrative was needlessly vague as to whether she was celibate or otherwise.
-
"He grew hair on his chest and lost a bit on his head so that he began to look a bit like a broom handle with a receding fringe of steel wool. He grew a bit of a pot while in an utterly perverse fashion he developed muscles in all the right places. In all the right places." (What does that even mean?)
-
Uses of "demanded": 12!!! (pp. 176 and 177 each contain 2, p. 178 has 3, and p. 179 has four!)
Use of "[insert character] wanted to know" (after a question is asked): 1
...

"Old, Old Death in New, New Venice" (19??)
3/10
A sadistic douchebag calling himself a "poet" visits the new Venice on Mars. Weird BDSM stuff. Vague sentences at key points in the story, including the ending. A waste of ink. This is the second story I've read now featuring pederasty in Venice (the other was du Maurier's "Ganymede"). What gives?
-
"A boy of perhaps fourteen, dressed romantically in tattered pantaloons, paused by the canal, his small melon buttocks outlined against the thin fabric that covered them, and began nonchalantly to urinate into the canal. Passersby gave him little notice. How charming, Conrad thought..."
-
Use of "demanded": 1
Hair is a "halo": 1
....

"The Premier's Lady" (19??)
4/10
A politician's wife suspects something isn't quite right with her husband since the assassination attempt in which he nearly died. The story ends abruptly, and the final line doesn't feel like one (I actually turned the last page because I didn't know it was over). This lady is a monster. After her previous lover lost his leg in a wreck she caused by speeding, she simply exited their relationship to marry another man who "... would eventually fill all the ambitions she had for her life in a way that easygoing Peter never would. He was, after all, a follower, and, though she loved him quite desperately at the time, she wanted a doer, someone to fill her own need for position and fame. Besides, she told herself bitterly, she hadn't really wanted to link her life with someone less than whole—regardless of how he came to be that way." What the heck?!
-
Uses of "demanded": 6 (2 on p. 209, 1 on p. 210, 2 on p. 211)
...

"The Goddess of the Cats" (1972)
4/10
So, a muralista is hired to work on a mermaid mural in a courtyard. He's a pretty awful human being in his own right, and clashes with the owner (?) of the building (it's told from his ignorant, tripped-out perspective, so he just calls him "the gray giant"). The author seems to have been deeply confused about teonanácatl (which is a mushroom) as he calls it a cactus at various points in the story. Or maybe the main character was just tripping balls on peyote all along and simply didn't know the gods' flesh was something entirely different... who knows. Anyway, the story is dumb, and the climax is a vague drug-induced fantasy-fulfilling death trip that probably doesn't happen.
-
"They too he knew in the silence of his room when the day was done and he could do the thing with the buttons that returned him to the earth and living flesh of his hill people. He trembled at the thought, at the wonderful terror of..." (Ah yes, "the thing with the buttons"...)
-
Grammar:
"... he would have destroyed the thing in very fear of his life and soul."
-
Use of "demanded": 1 (+1 "commanded")
Uses of "said simply": 2 on p. 224
...

"The Weariest River" (1973)
4/10
By far the longest story here. Another weirdly gross one where a man, afraid to die, invents something to make people "unkillable" (like Deadpool, or a cockroach). They still grow old, though. So they come up with an illegal drug that can kill these "policyholders," which the inventor of "immortality" ironically peddles to them at nearly 300 years of age. So you have an overpopulated corporate-ruled city filled with elderly folks who can't die, some angry young people who can, and very heavily armed, sadistic police who revel in the violence of it all. Lots more BDSM, and drug use, and for reasons I cannot fathom, the young women are sexually drawn to the elderly men and the young men to the elderly women... blegh. Some elements are unclear.
-
"The flesh of the calves sagged, while the heavy muscles of the thighs bulged through the skin in stringy masculinity. His chest remained remarkably firm, although the nipples had expanded and the fatty deposits about the pectorals were sagging."
-
Uses of "demanded": 7
Uses of "dreamily": 6 at least (4 on p. 247, then 2 more on pp. 248 and 249 respectively)
Uses of "[insert character] whirled": 2
Uses of "sensuous": at least 4 (in only 2 pages, pp. 243, 244)
"Sinuous" is used twice in one paragraph (p. 244)
Hair "frames" face: 1
Hair is like a "halo": 1
...

[Rylan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was a weird but fun read. Not all of the stories were my very favorite but I enjoyed quite a few of them. My personal favorite was Fall Out One. I thought that the view of what the future would be like back in the 70s is a rather strange but almost true way of life.

[Madison Swain-Bowden · Rating 3 out of 5]

I pulled this book randomly off the shelf on a whim. Quite enjoyed it! Probably won't give it a second read, but it was nice the first time around. First short story is only 3 pages, and gives a great laugh. Scortia is all over the place in this book - no really consistent theme throughout. This isn't a bad thing, but it makes each story distinct. He has some amazing sci-fi ideas, and some memorable stories. Some of them are lighthearted and happy, others (like the last one) are dark, cynical, and speak volumes in only dozens of pages.

[Xabi1990 · Rating 3 out of 5]

5/10. No leí más suyo...

[marta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Las historias son tan raras, inimaginables, originales e impredecibles que engancha. Por ello, es muy divertido de leer.

[Joshua Hair · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a surprisingly good time with this collection. Going in, I was unfamiliar with Mr. Scortia’s work. Reasonably, I expected run-of-the-mill science fiction of the seventies. What I did not expect was a rather eclectic collection that includes: a phoenix explaining to a hapless news reporter why he built his nest in the city; a frustrated soldier who makes a wrong move in a public restroom; a brilliant but fading scientist who ponders on the accuracy of Mary Shelley’s creation; a monster of legend who descends from the stars and becomes trapped by a greedy king; and many more.

Not only did the sheer originality impress me but so, too, did the relevance to today’s world. Based solely off this collection I will be on the lookout for more of Mr. Scortia’s work. This collection has a home on my bookshelves for as long as it wants to be there.