Short story for April 2020 - The Tunnel Under the World

[Ed]

Our short story for April 2020 is The Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl, 1955.

Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31979

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj6io...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeV59...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcPwl...

Librivox: https://librivox.org/the-tunnel-under...

Also available in kindle and audio on Amazon for about $1.

It is a bit longish for a short story. Maybe more of a novelette.
It has inspired several other stories and films. Plus, I just adore the cover photo:

[Ed]

Jim let me choose this month.

I wanted to find something recent, not by a dead white man, and uplifting. But it also had to be available for free in multiple formats.

I couldn't find one fast enough that met all those criteria, so I'm falling back on this one I suggested earlier. I've not read it, but it looks good.

If you have suggestions, send me or Jim a private message. (Don't post story ideas here. Use a private message. If you post here, we will probably talk about the story now, and so we won't want to make it story-of-the-month later.)

[Peter]

Classic story. Well received when published, and I've read it at least twice. Let's see what I can find....
Well, it gets its own wikipage. Caution: SPOILERS! in the plot summary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tun...
Love that Galaxy cover! Woo-ee! 1954 side-boob cheesecake!
Wiki also lists an audio version.
Many, many reprints over the years: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cg...
It is a novelette, as Ed suggested. No awards or nominations, surprisingly. Though the story is older than most of the awards!
Has a page here, also: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Nothing else substantial showed up. I'll have to re-read it. I remember quite a bit from the story, which I haven't read in decades. (view spoiler)[ The protag and his family get used for unwitting guinea-pigs for testing ad campaigns (hide spoiler)]
[Very LOUD bullhorn:] "Freckle, Freckle, Freckle, Freckle, Freckle...."
"Do you have any other brand of freezer? It stinks!"

[Jim]

I read the story many years ago and just finished rereading it. Some of it was a familiar but I realized that I had missed something the first time around. I won't mention it until some more people have read it but it has to do with something April Horn says near the end. "Do you suppose----"

[Ed]

I've also just read it. Pretty good. While it has inspired two major films, each one taking on a different aspect of the story, it also was made into a more direct faithful adaptation in Italian. I don't think that is available anywhere, now.

The focus on advertising campaigns reminds me of the other Pohl story we read recently, The Space Merchants.

[Zhermen]

Even if it was published in 1955 it is very relevant for our time. I am interested in marketing and how our world is oversaturated with adds. Despite knowing, it is a tool for manipulation on some unconscious level, they have impact. It was a re-read for me and I like the idea that although Burckhardt realizes what happened with his world, he still wants to fight the injustice. When you read it , every detail makes sense with the twists. I don't know where the time loop motive comes from, so if anybody knows please share.
The story reminded me of several movies. One of them is Dark City and the other is The Truman Show.

[Jim]

Wow! That was fantastic. I loved the way it unfurled.

I thought the time loop was explained by April in part 5. What doesn't make sense?

[Jim]

Jim wrote: "Wow! That was fantastic. I loved the way it unfurled.

I thought the time loop was explained by April in part 5. What doesn't make sense?"

Yes, they repeat the same day with different advertising routines to be able to have a familiar landscape to compare them. The other consideration was that by wiping out everybody's memory each night and repeating the same day there would be less chance of anybody noticing enough inconsistencies about the imperfect simulation of the original town such as the cellars.

I would like to expand on the point I brought up earlier about April Horn's statement. She seems to imply that Dorchin was thinking about taking over the world. "And that's not the end of it. Once he finds the master words that make people act, do you suppose he will stop with that? Do you suppose----"

[Ed]

Themindseye wrote: "The story reminded me of several movies. ..."

Another one is (view spoiler)[Groundhog Day (hide spoiler)].

[Zhermen]

Jim wrote: "Wow! That was fantastic. I loved the way it unfurled.

I thought the time loop was explained by April in part 5. What doesn't make sense?"

I meant the first literature piece to introduce this idea of a time loop.

[Zhermen]

Ed wrote: "Themindseye wrote: "The story reminded me of several movies. ..."

Another one is [spoilers removed]."

Oh yes, thanks.

[Jim]

Heinlein wrote the time loop short story "By His Bootstraps" in 1941, so that was well before this was published in 1955. I thought his "All You Zombies" was earlier too, but he didn't write it until 1959. Both are excellent.

[Ed]

Themindseye wrote: "I meant the first literature piece to introduce ..."

Depends on how you define it exactly, but this article notes many such stories, starting with Christmas Every Day from 1892. If any day is going to repeat endlessly, Christmas would probably be my least favorite. The songs alone would drive me batty.

[Ed]

The Italian film version of this story, "Il Tunnel Sotto il Mundo", is impossible to watch. Not because you can't find it -- a simple web search will turn up a bootleg copy viewable online -- but because it is incomprehensible. I clicked through various scenes, but I'd have to be really wasted to watch the whole 56 minutes.

It's better just to read this review.

The story diverges in tiny ways from the original. See if you can spot the changes:An ordinary man seems to be living the same day over and over again. A spatial anomaly allows him to step outside of this time loop where he meets a man who claims that the world has ended and he is a visiting Martian who likes to drink human blood…. There’s a particularly odd scene towards the end of the film where Salviero is hanging around in the snowy woods with a bearded man in a bedsheet carrying a paint roller smeared with blood, and a dark brunette who he introduces as ‘The Prophetess’. Old beardy spends a good few minutes spouting vague philosophy before VoiceOver Woman takes over completely out of left field to explain the every day lives of the cave creatures of Mercury! ... But it’s all resolved when they get shot by a Nazi soldier who happens to be passing!

[Zhermen]

Ed wrote: "Themindseye wrote: "I meant the first literature piece to introduce ..."

Depends on how you define it exactly, but this article notes many such stories, starting with [book:Christmas Every Day|232..."

Thanks, I will check them out.

[Jim]

I just watched a creditable adaptation of this as a TV show by "Out of the Unknown" which is kind of a BBC version of the Outer Limits that ran from 1965 for 4 seasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_...