Spawn by P. Schuyler Miller

[Dan]

"Spawn" is a science fiction story originally published in the August 1939 issue of Weird Tales. Does that make it horror or weird? Miller was a Golden Age science fiction writer who had no less than five stories published in Weird Tales during his lifetime. Most of his science fiction has a horror bent to it. All his horror/weird stories have a science fiction component. So much for genre.

This story's artistry has captured my imagination and I find myself reading it over and over. The first words grab one and never let go. Check it out:

"Pedants spout glibly of probability, quibble and hedge, gulp at imagined gnats. Nothing is impossible to mathematics. Only improbable. Only very improbable.

Only impossibly improbable.

Earth, for example, is improbable. Planets should not logically exist, nor on existing planets life. Balances of forces are too impossibly delicate; origins too complexly coincidental. But Earth does exist—and on Earth life.

We see Earth and we see life, or we see something, however improbable, and call it Earth and life. We forget probabilities and mathematics and live by our senses, by our common sense. Our common sense sees Earth and it sees life, and in a kind of darkened mirror it sees men—but men are utterly improbable!

Ooze to worms and worms to fishes. Fishes to frogs and frogs to lizards. Lizards to rats and rats to men, and men at last to bloated, futuristic Brains. Brains are improbable: brains and senses, and above all, common sense. Not impossible—because nothing is impossible—but so improbable that nowhere in all the improbable stars, nowhere in all the improbably empty space between the stars, is there room for other Earths and other rats and men.

Nowhere—life."

The story goes on to become a very strange alien invasion story.

I'm not the only one amazed by this gem. Eric Flint writes of it:

"This story really, really, really shouldn't work. If there's any 'rule of writing' that P. Schuyler Miller doesn't violate somewhere in the course of it, I don't know what it is. The plot is . . .

Absurd. The characters are . . .

Preposterous. The prose is . . .

"Purple" doesn't begin to capture the color.

So much for the rules of writing. In its own completely over-the-top style, this story is a masterpiece.

Okay, a madman's masterpiece, maybe, and certainly one of a kind. It still qualifies for the term because it fulfills the ultimate criterion for a great story—and, ultimately, the only criterion worth talking about.

It works. It really, really, really works."

I agree. David Drake in the afterword states (in part):

"I've read all or nearly all of Miller's published fiction, and I can say with certainty that he never wrote anything else even remotely like 'Spawn.' In form it's less a story than a prose poem or a drama in blank verse. It really is SF—Miller had a degree in chemistry, and if you read carefully you'll note underlying the lush color and imagery that there's a degree of scientific rigor very unusual for 1939—but it appeared in Weird Tales rather than in an SF magazine (generally Astounding by that point) as most of Miller's other published stories did. (Miller had several stories in Campbell's Unknown, but 'Spawn' would've been even more out of place there than in Astounding.)

'Spawn' demonstrates highly unusual stylistic touches—tricks, I'd say, but that would imply they were conscious and that the author could repeat them. Miller never did, making me suspect that the process of creation here wasn't completely intellectual."

If you're curious, you can read it (like I did) here: http://hell.pl/szymon/Baen/The%20best...

[Jim]

I discovered P. Schuyler Miller by accident awhile back. Very good SF writer for the 30's when he started. It looks like he wrote short Sf into the 50's but I don't think any of it has been collected and the short stories are hard to find individually. I've read "The Titan", "Tetrahedra of Space", "The Sands of Time" and the first story I read was "The Thing on Outer Shoal". There are some others but I don't remember off the top of my head. I immediately got a copy at your link but haven't read it yet.

[Dan]

The only other Schuyler (pronounced SKY-ler) Miller I have read was "Tetrahedra of Space." It had a lot of similarities to "Spawn." I think "Spawn" was Schuyler Miller unleashed to write the story he wanted to/was meant to write. I have the feeling "Tetrahedra" was a compromise and that he made story changes to fit Wonder Stories' format. That is conjecture on my part and I could be wrong. "Tetrhaedra" could also simply have been early Schuyler Miller.

Schuyler Miller was ahead of his time. I'm looking for more of his work to enjoy.

[Jim]

Tetrahedra was definitely an early story written in 1931 and according to isfdb.org it was the 8th short story he wrote. He wrote Spawn in 1939. I had to look up tetrahedra to find out what it was (triangular pyramid). Interesting concept for an alien back in 1931. It's interesting that the situation was resolved with some clever wheeling and dealing by humans to convince the Mercutians that Mars would be better suited to their needs. Hope you have better luck finding his stories than I have had.