Short Story Reviews: Michael Bishop’s “The Windows in Dante’s Hell” (1973), Barrington J. Bayley’s “Exit from City 5” (1971), and A. J. Deutsch’s “A Subway Named Mobius” (1950)

/ Joachim Boaz

My first review of 2024!

To quote a much younger me: “I’ve always been fascinated by imaginary and historical cities: the utopian (Tommaso Campanella’s 1602 work The City of the Sun), the allegorical (Calvino’s Invisible Cities), the multi-layered (Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Rome), the planned (Palmanova), the [fantastically] decaying (Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris), the multi-tiered (Tolkein’s Minas Tirith)…”

The science-fictional examples–from the urban gestalt of San Francisco in John Shirley’s  City Come A-Walkin’ (1980) to the arcologies of an overpopulated world in Robert Silverberg’s The World Inside (1971)–hold special appeal. As manifestations of societal decadence and vice or vibrant communities of interaction and discovery, they often become characters—changing and evolving over the course of the narrative.

To inaugurate my brand new short story review series on The Urban Landscape in Science Fiction, I’ve selected one of my favorite SF short stories: Michael Bishop’s “The Windows in Dante’s Hell” (1973). Bishop adeptly renders a human drama in a future Atlanta, replete with soaring dome and nine subterranean levels. I’ve paired it with two stories entirely new to me: Barrington J. Bayley’s “Exit from City 5” (1971) and A. J. Deutsch’s “A Subway Named Mobius” (1953). Bayley depicts a city as generation ship. A. J. Deutsch imagines a mathematical mystery within a rapidly expanding metro system underneath a future Boston.

Let me know if you have any favorite city-centric short stories that I haven’t covered on the site published pre-1985 that I could include in this series.

Up Next: TBD

  • Paul Lehr’s cover for the 1974 edition

5/5 (Masterpiece)

Michael Bishop’s “The Windows in Dante’s Hell” first appeared in Orbit 12, ed. Damon Knight (1973). If you have an Internet Archive account, you can read it online here.

The Urban Nucleus sequence (1970-1979), collected and chronologically framed in the uniformly brilliant Catacomb Years (1979), charts the future history of an entombed/reborn Atlanta, Georgia from a diverse array of viewpoints–geriatric polyamorous couples, African American teenagers, etc. “The Windows in Dante’s Hell,” the second-published short story in the sequence, poignantly renders an old woman’s life-long attempt to survive within the dark subterranean reaches of an urban dystopia that alternatively serves as a metacommentary on the power of science fiction stories.

Mr. Ardrey, 23, and his African American boss’ 14-year-old son Newlyn, decide to retrieve the dead body of the one-hundred-year-old Almira Longhope, who lived more than 70 years of her life alone on Level 8. Normally automated servo-units would dispose of the dead without families. Mr. Ardrey gives in to the youth’s desire to see and experience something new. He knows that “human beings are invariably too compassionate” and the possibility of disquieting feelings when confronting a corpse and “all its attendant suggestions of loneliness” (40).

Nothing prepares them for the “immensely strange” world/mausoleum Almira Longhope carved out in her three-room cubicle (43). In what is essentially a direct reference to Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-1969), Almira recreated the command bridge of the Enterprise replete with banks of “computerlike gadgetry,” communication devices, and windows that peer into the world outside–domed city, moon, Saturn, the depths of space) (43). In her bedroom, piles of logs stored in old manilla folders ruminate on her deep sadness, often through the narrative lens of individual episodes like the alternate universe episode “Mirror, Mirror” (1967) (rendered by Bishop as “Between the Star Mirrors”). She ruminates: “I wish I could break through a moment and visit my other self” (50). Deeply fearful that she would find emptiness in both worlds, the episode serves as a salve. A bit of brightness illuminates her darkness: she’d always have an alternate universe to “reach into and to wonder at” (50).

Mr. Ardrey dismisses Almira’s obsession, an “epitaph out of old screenplays and pulp magazine stories,” as “junk” (47) and the sign of a life wasted. Newlyn, increasingly at odds with Mr. Ardrey, murmurs “It’s some of the neatest stuff I’ve ever seen” (49). As the two interlopers leaf peer into her imaginary world, they too must confront their own failings and the societal forces of the city metaphorically transforming its inhabitants into ghosts.

This is a beautiful story. Almira’s transformed cubicle, a window into an imaginary world, is a powerful image that has stayed with me since I read the story almost a decade ago. Her portal becomes the stage for a confrontation between Mr. Ardrey, increasingly an instrument of the status quo, and the young Newlyn, still fascinated by the world and its people. It’s a loving homage to Star Trek and fandom.

Bishop passed away on November 23rd after a period of hospice care. He’s one of my favorite authors and, in my brief interactions with him, a kind soul. Check out Rich Horton’s obituary, my reviews of A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975) and Stolen Faces (1977) (among many others), and my guest post review series from early in the history of the site. His work is not to be missed.

Highly recommended.

  • Richard Powers’ cover for the 1971 first edition

3/5 (Average)

Barrington J. Bayley’s “Exit from City 5” first appeared in New Worlds Quarterly, ed. Michael Moorcock (1971). I you have an Internet Archive account, you can read it online here.

City 5, a rocket-propelled metropolis of 2 million that departed Earth hundreds of years in the past, rests outside the material universe. The cause of the exodus? The mysterious shrinkage of an “entire conglomeration of galactic and stellar systems” (160). City 5 was the only vessel to successfully emerge outside the material universe. Its inhabitants, not entirely aware of their unique and extreme isolation, spend their days adhering to strict routines and conducting the labor-intensive inventories for the Inertial Stocktaking Department (153).

Within this closed system, Kord awakes from his “customary year of suspended animation” and his “special language of sociodynamic symbology” indicates dangerous tendencies afoot in City 5 (156). Kord views himself as the last in a line of leaders, “including men like Chariman Mao” (165), who believe that society’s survival depends on fixing it to an eternal pattern. He believes that humanity’s survival depends on creating a dreamtime in the mold of the Australian “aborigines” in order to create long-term stability in the harsh environment of the city that must not lose mass (167). In humorous Jungian fashion, Kord looks for “feminine” symbols rather than the “thrusting, probing” of “pointed lances” and “towers on the plain” (170). The city must look inside itself rather than outward beyond its dome.

The second threat follows the increasingly moody Kayin, who works for the Inertial Stocktaking Department. Previously a member of the Astronomical Society, a target of the newly awakened Kord for its outward thinking, Kayin does not know exactly where his loyalties lie. As rebellion swells inside of the city, Kayin takes another position–and into the metaphysical/orgasmic expanse (it’s the New Wave) we descend.

As with most of Barrington J. Bayley’s work I’ve read, “Exit from City 5” contains a maelstrom of fascinating ideas from Kord’s special language of sociodynamic symbology to his theories of hypnogogic interiority in the face of cosmic emptiness. I am reminded of colliding time waves in Collision Course (variant title: Collision with Chronos) (1973); the garment-maker as psychiatrist/priest and molder of public opinion in The Garments of Caean (1976); and the city as time-traveling empire-enforcing node in The Fall of Chronopolis (1974). Unfortunately, as with the novels I mentioned, Bayley’s visions rarely manage to entirely coalesce in a satisfying story with defined characters. Regardless, this is a unique take on the generation ship. In this formulation, there can be no destination.

I’ve gone ahead and included “Exit from City 5” in my series on generation spaceships.

Previous installment: Julian May’s “Star of Wonder” (1953).

Up Next: Fred Saberhagen’s “Birthdays” (1976).

Recommended only for fans of Bayley’s cosmos-spanning idea bombardments.

3/5 (Average)

A. J. Deutsch’s “A Subway Named Mobius” first appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, ed. John W. Campbell, Jr. (December 1950). You can read it online here.

In a future Boston, the subway system develops a bewildering complexity: “two hundred twenty-seven trains running the subways every weekday, and they carried about a million and a half passengers” (72). When metro Number 86 disappears, it takes days for the operators to notice. A search yields nothing. A mathematician comes up with a crackpot theory. But there are other unusual events happening along the line, and Professor Tupelo’s talk of topology and Möbius strips and Klein bottles might yield a metaphysical truth.

“A Subway Named Mobius” reminded me of the feel of mathematician Chan Davis’ late 40s short stories–“The Nightmare” (1946) and “To Still the Drums” (1946)–that also appeared in Astounding. In both cases complex new problem and able experts, far from fleshed out or even vaguely interesting characters, attempt to solve it with extensive multi-page didactic dialogue. This style of science fiction does not resonate with me but provides a fascinating window into the editorial choices and aims of John W. Campbell, Jr. and the mentalities of the immediate post-WWII world.

I appreciate Deutsch’s willingness to use mathematics to speculate on a metaphysical possibility. That said, I found Paul Orban’s interior art (below) more evocative than Deutsch’s functionalist prose. Deutsch doesn’t seem willing to ruminate on the increasing complexity of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) as a topical metaphor for post-War urban transformation.

  • Paul Orban’s interior art for “A Subway Named Mobius” in Astounding Science Fiction, ed. John W. Campbell, Jr. (December 1950)

If you are more mathematically and scientifically-minded than I am, “A Subway Named Mobius” might resonate in a far more transfixing fashion. As Deutsch refuses to push the metaphorical possibilities of his premise, there isn’t much beyond the central topological mystery, which, thankfully, is fascinating on its own.

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

38 thoughts on “Short Story Reviews: Michael Bishop’s “The Windows in Dante’s Hell” (1973), Barrington J. Bayley’s “Exit from City 5” (1971), and A. J. Deutsch’s “A Subway Named Mobius” (1950)”

  1. For me, Subway is inextricably entangled with Jacqueline Steiner and Bess Lomax Hawes’ “Charlie on the MTA”, whose protagonist cannot exit his train for more mundane reasons.

    Reply

    • Can’t say I knew what you were referring to until I looked up the song on Wikipedia.

      Bizarre. I’ll have to give it a listen.

      That 1949 date might mean that Deutsch was inspired a bit by the song.

      Reply

      • I was raised on folk music. In fact, folk music got my father (briefly) deported from Canada as the folk musicians with whom my father’s parents’ palled around with–Pete Seeger and that crowd–were seen as dangerously left wing.

        Reply

        • Well, the song was recorded to promote a progressive candidate so it makes sense why you would have heard it as a kid!

          My parents are both architects so a bit of that fascination with the built landscape rubbed off on me… hence the post!

          Reply

    • Many thanks for all this discussion! I also read and enjoyed “A Subway Named Mobius.” I read about “Charlie on the MTA” in Pete Seeger’s 1972 book The Incomplete Folksinger, a lengthy (and wonderful) collection of his writings from Sing Out! (the folk mag he was involved with) and other sources.

      Reply

      • Interesting. Can’t say I know much about folk music. I only have a few music history books in my collection — Vietnam War and protest music, a few books on Shostakovich, some writings by Stravinsky, one general history of music in the 20th century, one general history of classical music…

        Reply

        • It’s a great book–not just about folk music in the narrow sense, but the world and era (mainly the fifties and sixties) as seen by Seeger and his friends (Woody Guthrie, the Sing Out! staff, etc.)

          Reply

  2. Like James, I think of “A Subway Named Mobius” and “Charlie on the MTA” as two sides of the same story.

    A couple of “Future City” recommendations: “Billennium”, by J. G. Ballard; and, somewhat in the vein of “Exit from City 5” (though not really), THE INVERTED WORLD, by Christopher Priest. Another novel: THE MILLION CITIES, by J. T. McIntosh.

    The stories in Roger Elwood’s anthology FUTURE CITY might be worth a look.

    And how about “Folding Beijing”, Hao Jingfang’s Hugo winning novelette?

    Also, the stories in C. J. Cherryh’s collecton SUNFALL are all worth a look. My favorite is “The Only Death in the City”, but “Highliner” might be the most city-centric.

    And, of course, Asimov’s THE CAVES OF STEEL fits the theme.

    Reply

      • I try to stay away from math-related short stories. But… I made an exception here.

        A tangent that demonstrates my extraordinary dislike of all things math: I received a 3/5 on the AP Statistics Exam (I took Statistics instead of Calculus in High School), which meant that I only needed one class of “general math credit” as an undergrad. It remains one of the happiest days of my life. Muahaha. I didn’t end up taking a math class at all for that final three credits — I took a cross-listed Introduction to the History of Math instead. Far more my speed 🙂

        Reply

  4. In addition to the Elwood anthology Future Cities, there’s a 1974 anthology, Hot & Cold Running Cities, ed. Georgess McHargue. I’m sure there are others as well.

    Reply

  5. Three stories come to mind, and coincidentally they are the first three in Damon Knight’s anthology CITIES OF WONDER: Robert Abernathy’s “Single Combat” and Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s “Dumb Waiter,” both involving conflict with what we would now call an urban AI, if I am remembering clearly; and “Jesting Pilot” by Kuttner/Moore as Lewis Padgett, a not at all comic inferno.

    Reply

  6. J. G. Ballard’s ‘The Ultimate City’ (1976) is well worth a look. In a way it’s almost the summation of many of the urban themes he deals with over the preceding years. I reckon there is a case to be made for Ballard as the preeminent SF author of the city, and that one could just settle on him, in order to examine the changing ideas and criticism of urbanism over the 1950s, 60s, 70s and beyond. And, indeed, his early story ‘Build Up’ (1957, aka ‘The Concentration City’) seems to me as a template of sorts for all of his later concerns regarding the pathologies of the modern city.

    A scholarly work that could be worth checking out: Carl Abbot, ‘Imaging Urban Futures’ (2016)

    Reply

    • Thank you for the Abbot recommendation. I’m deeply suspicious of future looking-studies of SF in order that we might “learn from” them vs. what they were trying to say about their own times… but… I’m willing to give it a shot. I’d be far more interested if it were a standard history of the city in SF. That would be more my speed! hah.

      “The Ultimate City” is a Ballard I haven’t gotten to yet.

      Reply

      • You’re probably right to be suspicious of the scholarly “use” of SF. But it is perhaps here that we part ways somewhat, at least regarding the “use value” (pardon my Marxian vocab…) of SF. I know that you are often most interested in what SF is “trying to say about their own times”. And this is certainly of great interest, to me as well. However, I feel that often lost in this insight is what exactly is the nature of “their own times”. For instance, not only is the “present” the concern of the present, but also a present’s past and future—even if such “futures” are largely imaginary or aspirational. To that end I am very interested in what SF’s compositional “times” have to say about how not only the author but the author’s broader social milieu imagines they are making a future, no matter if this future does not come to pass.

        In truth, I don’t think there is that much between you and me in this regard. Perhaps it’s just a question of emphasis and nuance.

        Mark Pontin mentions above one of the stories from Disch’s ‘334’. Not only would I like to second his recommendation, having read the entire novel last year. I additionally found Disch’s novel at times, an extremely interesting expression of the hopes and anxieties that many had in the late 1960s and early 1970s regarding the coming state welfare society of the future. To say that they were somewhat off regarding their fears and prognostications is perhaps something of an understatement (these stories were, after all, written before the oil shocks of the early 1970s—to name only one historical vector). But I also feel that Disch nailed our current sense of intensifying social dislocation brought on by technology, even though his envisioned tech is somewhat different than what we got.

        To that end, we have a lot to “learn from” tales like Disch’s, even if its just to clarify, as you say, “what they were trying to say about their own times”. But why stop there? Particularly if we are always repurposing the work of the past with an eye to “our” present… and future.

        Reply

        • antyphayes: I … found Disch’s novel at times, an extremely interesting expression of the hopes and anxieties that many had in the late 1960s and early 1970s regarding the coming state welfare society of the future.

          Yeah.

          Two points —

          [1] For me, one of great old SF’s primary interests is the ideas and conclusions that a deep-thinking writer arrived at which are fundamentally valid and/or interesting despite (a) that writer being several — sometimes many — decades removed in the historical past, and (b) we ourselves imagining that the ‘alternate future’ the writer predicted has necessarily been made irrelevant by what actually eventuated in our real-world timeline.

          See forex: E.M Forster’s ‘The Machine Stops’ re. the internet’s mass social effect or H.G. Wells’s THE WORLD SET FREE re. nuclear bombs and deterrence; or, more recently, Brunner’s STAND ON ZANZIBAR and Budrys’s MICHAELMAS re. what a global society linked by instantaneous electronic networks would look like.

          [2] As for Disch’s 334 specifically, its ‘hopes and anxieties … regarding the coming state welfare society of the future” didn’t necessarily become irrelevant because in the late 1970s we got neoliberalism instead.

          They may only have been postponed. I’m around venture capitalists to some extent and many of them see no alternative given the advance of AI/robotics —
          https://agilityrobotics.com/
          — to some form of Basic Income.

          Granted, those VCs wrong in the sense that there is an alternative. But it’s the continuation of neoliberalism with its “Because markets; go die” approach to society. And since that also means the eventual collapse of most markets too, ultimately the capitalists are going to need government to bail out markets — hence, Basic Income.

          Reply

          • I agree Mark.

            Firstly, I too think past writers have a lot to tell us about our present, insofar as they constitute a moment of our present. Or as Faulkner once quipped, “the past is never dead. It’s not even past”. To that end, even writer’s not as “deep-thinking” as Disch have something to tell us, albeit perhaps not as profound as we would hope (Keith Laumer comes to mind).

            Of your examples I’ve not read Budrys’s Michaelmas. Thanks for reminding me about it. It’s past time I finally read it. Of the others, I am nodding in furious agreement. Indeed, I am somewhat obsessed with Brunner’s Zanzibar—a strange, hypermodern artifact that I often return to.

            Secondly, I also agree that the “hopes and anxieties” conjured and expressed in 334 are still with us—and not only for the reasons sketched above. What I think is interesting about the current revival of interest in a universal basic income is precisely is similarity and difference from earlier conceptions. SF was chock full of the fears of what the coming cybernetic automation of labour would bring in its wake back in the 1950s and 60s (Pohl ‘The Midas Plague’ (1954) is a somewhat ridiculous mediation on such fears—I’ve written about this story here: https://thesinisterscience.com/2021/01/11/frederik-pohls-mass-consumer-1-the-midas-plague/).

            The chief difference, as I see it, is what happened between the early 1970s and the 2010s—in a word, as you have pointed out, “neo-liberalism”. Back in the 1950s and 60s even Marxists were scratching their collective heads over the apparent absence of financial crisis in the post-war world. Many saw the gradual elimination of labour on the back of the spread of commodity abundance and automation. Certainly, this changed drastically in the West after 1973. I recall the world I grew up in in the 1970s and 80’s held out more of a promise of urban decay and mass unemployment than it did the shiny space age dream of fully automated luxury capitalism/communism that my elders had so recently been fed. So yes, it is somewhat strange that a version of the 1950s/60s dream world has resurfaced in the wake of 2008. Why is this the case? That is something I am still puzzling over.

            Your suggestion that a UBI may come because capitalism needs it, after a fashion, is interesting, and indeed resonates with he visions of state capitalism, east and west, of the 60s. But the cynic, and dare I say realist, in me cannot see such a thing happening short of the complete transformation and overthrow of capitalism—which, if such happened, would also eliminate the need for a UBI.

            Reply

            • I went ahead and bought the book regardless!

              I guess I should phrase it a different way. I, personally, am not interested in writing about SF as a way of thinking about our present or future. I admit that I am a hidebound historian… And I’m okay with that. I’ll leave it to other scholars!

            • I probably shouldn’t make too much of the differences between us Joachim. I am very much committed to your historical perspective on SF, even if I don’t want to be only a “hidebound historian”.

              And just to be clear, my undergraduate degree was in philosophy and history, though philosophy won out when I went on to postgraduate study—more’s the pity!

  7. “Subway Moebius” was adapted to film by an argentinian filmaker, Gustavo Mosquera, in the 1996 feature “Moebius”. It is an indy film, very surreal, in a free adaptation from the short story.
    I have to mention a writer from Uruguay, Mario Levrero. He wrote two novels “The City” and “The Place”, never translated to englih. The two novels take place in some weird, almost abstract cities, in a mixture of Kafka and Ballard.

    Reply

    • Thanks for stopping by!

      I saw that there was an adaptation but I haven’t seen it. Have you read the original short story? Unfortunately, it is not that surreal or Kafka-like despite the premise.

      As for Mario Levrero, it’s unfortunately that more non-English authors remain untranslated. Alas.

      Reply

  8. Hm, I can’t really come up with a lot of city centered short stories, outside the obvious Ballard ones, but Anna Kavans recently mentioned “New and Splendid” from A Bright Green Field would definitely fit the bill here. There were also a couple in Josephine Saxtons Power of Time-collection (“Lover from the Dawn of Time” and “Silence in Having Words: Purple” come to mind), and perhaps in its own bizarre way Lems “The Tale of King Gnuff”.

    With novels there’s a bit more. On the top of my head:
    The Strugatskys: The Doomed City and The Final Circle og Paradise
    Doris Piserchia: The Fluger (and to some degree The Spinner)
    Mark Adlard: Volteface
    Karinthy: Metropole
    Priest: A Dream of Wassex (sort of)

    Also, I think the YA novel This Time of Darkness by Helen M Hoover (one of the first authors I got really into in my youth) would fit here as well. It seems to be one of the best regarded of her books.

    Reply

    • Thank you for reminding me again of Anna Kavan’s collection A Bright Green Field. When I looked last there was not a copy on Internet Archive and copies were incredibly pricey. It’s now on the Archive!

      https://archive.org/details/brightgreenfield0000edmo/mode/2up

      I have both the Piserchia novels, both the Strugatskys, and Karinthy and Priest. All unread! hah. Alas.

      As for Adlard, I read the first one in that sequence and reviewed it on the site. Wasn’t the biggest fan. I think I gave away my copy. I probably won’t be reading the second volume anytime soon.

      Reply

      • Yes, A Bright Green Field is notoriously unobtainable, so it’s good to see that it’s at least available digitally. I don’t know why Peter Owen doesn’t make a reprint (like they do with so many other Kavan books), it seems like they would be printing money. The same with The Eagles Nest.

        I only got to read A Bright Green Field because a danish translation was published last year. There seems to be only two of her books available in danish (the other one obvioulsy being Ice), so it’s really great that they chose such a rare (and good) one for the second. On the not so great side, the translation is somewhat poor, but beggars can’t be choosers I guess.

        Hope you get to the other ones at some point. I really liked Volteface myself. It’s certainly not coherent, but full of weird ideas and pitch black satire.

        Reply

  9. One of the better science fiction “buildings” was Gregory Benford’s “chandaliers” — gorgeous structures suspended in space, with lighted alleyways and beautiful details aplenty. The chandeliers had to be abandoned when the Inner Galaxy’s robots attacked them, and now their descendants roam the universe as nomad gypsies.

    Reply

    • I haven’t read a ton of Benford other than a few of his earliest works. I assume they’re novels and mostly post-1985? If so, they do not fit the perimeters of this project but it does sound fascinating.

      Reply

Comment! Join the discussion!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.