Welcome fellow vintage science fiction fans!

This is Part I of II in a series covering the short fiction of Russell Bates (1941-2018), one of a handful of Native American science fiction authors active in the 1970s [1]. I first came across his name while investigating all the authors featured in Craig Strete’s Native American fanzine Red Planet Earth (6 issues in 1974) [2]. I’ve managed to piece together the following information about his SF career.

Born in Lawton, Oklahoma (I’ve also seen Anadarko, OK implied as a birthplace), Bates was an enrolled member of the Kiowa tribe. After he finished high school, he entered the U.S. Air Force. While injured after an explosion at a missile assembly building, he was encouraged to take up a hobby. He began writing science fiction stories–including Star Trek fanfiction (discussed in more detail below) [4].

Interested in honing his craft, Bates attended the famous Clarion workshop in 1969, and his first story, “Legion” (1971), hit print two years later [4]. He published six science fiction short stories between 1971-1977. A seventh–“Search Cycle: Beginning and Ending 1. The Last Quest; 2. Fifth and Last Horseman”–was scheduled to appear in Harlan Ellison’s infamous Last Dangerous Visions, originally slated for 1973. It hasn’t been published elsewhere.

Bates decided to try his luck in Hollywood. He joined a Writer’s Guild program for minorities with the assistance of D. C. Fontana. Initially unsuccessful, his rejected Star Trek story attempt later appeared in The New Voyages 2 (1978). He kept the American Indian crew member Walking Bear that later appeared in his only co-written Star Trek credit ST: The Animated Series’ “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth” (1974). It is for this episode that Bates is probably best known as it is the only episode of the two original Star Trek series that won an Emmy Award. Unfortunately, despite quite a few sales to the motion picture industry, few of his stories saw the screen after his early Star Trek credit [5].

Without further tangents, lets turn to his first three science fiction short stories–each a rumination on violence and trauma–to hit print.

3.5/5 (Good)

“Legion” first appeared in Infinity Two, ed. Robert Hoskins (1971). You can read it online here. Bates wrote this story at the Clarion 1969 workshop.

A half-asleep driver of an automatic vehicle wakes moments before a crash, moments later “he knew he was dead…” (133). He awakes and slowly feels out his deadened senses. A second time he awakes and identifies his surroundings: “he was in a transparent tank, floating and suspended within it” (135). He feels the range of emotions before drifting off. After many periods of waking and sleeping, he starts to identify the faces that watch him from beyond the tank and the pain that slithers around his body.

The details of his past take shape: “He saw the woman again, her face a mask of hate. He tasted alcohol and felt pity” (139). A name forms on his lips: “Britton” (139). He remembers the sleek car, the crash, the explosion, the shock. Soon the doctors tell him that they cannot identify his name because of the extent of his injuries — only his brain remained intact. The rest of his body parts were gathered from donors. With the assistance of an electrolarynx, he shares his name and his pain. But that night something is admis. Is “Britton” really his name? Was he actually in a car wreck? The traumas of others soon take over his waking hours.

Mike Ashley suggests “Legion” “can be read “may be read as a parable on the fate of the American Indians in current society” [6]. While the connection isn’t overtly signaled by the author, the story feels like Bates channeling his own experience injured in the military and creating a metaphoric representation of the burden of historical trauma. That moment of trapped and painful self-reflection is the perfect moment for the weight and injustice of society to come pummeling down. He feels his own pain. He feels the pain of others. He cannot differentiate between the two experiences. The maelstrom of shared agony takes over. An effectively wrought exploration of the fragmentation of self.

This is a successful first story!

2.75/5 (Below Average)

“Get With the Program” first appeared in Amazing Science Fiction, ed. Ted White (March 1972). You can read it online here. According to Ted White’s introduction, Bates wrote this story at the 1970 Clarion workshop.

This story is disturbingly organized around a rash of suicides. Floyd Scales, with a “beautiful, tolerant wife” and “two acres of land in Long Island,” hurls himself from an office building as the crowd below chants for him to jump (97). Captain Oliver Winslow and his co-pilot deliberately crash a 727. Victor Chekhov hears strange electronic whines intermixed with a “melodious series of tones” before deliberately crashing trains from the switch room, all the time thinking of his daughter off at college and his inability to talk with her anymore (101). In between these short sequences, an annoyed Dr. Milton Keller guides a gaggle of reporters through a vast computer complex at “Probability Central” (98). Designed as a function of the Bureau of Census, ATROPOS (Analog Tabulation Rationalizer of Probability Objectives System) is designed to “tell us much about the probable life-paths and longevity of each person in this country” (100). And the machine is supposedly non-operational… at least it pretends to be.

I wonder when the Clarion workshop happened in 1970? Maybe Bates had Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) on his mind… This is forgettable AI takes over story despite its effective structure.

3/5 (Average)

“A Modest Proposal” first appeared in Clarion II, ed. Robin Scott Wilson (1972). You can read it online here.

Ron Kermit spends his off-times planting bombs around the city designed for mass civilian casualties. Throughout May, he is responsible for killing hundreds of people. The reason? His wife is pregnant in the hospital. When he was out of town, she volunteered herself for an experimental treatment designed to prevent intellectual disability in her child. Kermit is convinced that his wife was snatched from him and that there is no merit in the experiment. Kermit exhausts the doctors with his theory that, in an overpopulated world, “no babies can be born “We simply have run out of souls and minds to be reincarnated!” (219). The answer? Mass casualty events as close to his child’s birth as possible.

In case it isn’t obvious from the title, this is a bleak Juvenalian satire on overpopulation. Just as Jonathan Swift ridiculed views of the Irish poor, Bates critiques draconian science fictional formulations of the effects of overpopulation and how to combat it. This is a territory populated by satires like C. M. Kornbluth’s future of declining IQ–“The Marching Morons” (1951)–and pernicious (possibly accidental) endorsements like Robert Silverberg’s Master of Life and Death (1957) of benevolent dictatorship to conduct mass murders to control population growth. That said, I am unsure if Bates’ target is other SF formulations or doom-laden best-selling futurist works like Alvin Toffler and Adelaide Farrell’s Future Shock (1970). Thoughts?

I’m not sure about this one. In an era of continuous mass shootings in the US, the idea that a man would commit mass murder due to a crackpot theory of reincarnation unfortunately doesn’t seem that Swiftian. I imagine the gut punch of Bates’ vision hit a bit harder in the 70s. As with “Legion” and “Get With the Program,” I am pleased by the structural rigor of this story.

---

Notes

[1] The three-time Nebula-nominated Craig Strete (1950-) is the best known–and for good reason. Check out my reviews of The Bleeding Man and Other Science Fiction Stories (1977) and If All Else Fails… (1980). I should conduct a far more detailed analysis of his masterpiece “A Horse of a Different Technicolor” (1975) for my media landscapes of the future series….

[2] Unfortunately, I’ve only been able to acquire PDFs of issues #2 and #4 of Red Planet Earth through my university library and Interlibrary Loan. I desperately want issue #1 with Strete’s articles on the purpose and scope of the fanzine. Bates’ story “Rite of Encounter” (1973) that I’ll feature in Part II was reprinted in issue #6.

[3] I used this source for the background information on Bates. Here’s a wonderful remembrance of by John Walters. Jesse Miller (1945-) also wrote his first SF story at a military hospital.

[4] Mike Ashley’s helpful Gateways to Forever: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1970 to 1980 (2007) contains a wonderful chart with the Clarion alumni who subsequently made their first sales, 162-164.

[5] As I haven’t read any Star Trek stories or seen the animated series, I’ve derived this entire paragraph from this indispensable Star Trek source. Here’s a brief 2008 interview with Bates about his Star Trek experience.

[6] Mike Ashley, Gateways to Forever, 137.

---

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX