The Metrognome and Other Stories

INTRODUCTION

GYRO GEARLOOSE, the ultimate inventor created by the immortal Carl Barks, one day invents a machine that can answer any question. Deciding to start it out with something simple, he points to a small bird outside his window and inquires of the device, "Why is that bird singing?" Whereupon the machine replies, "Oh, maybe he's glad, maybe he's sad, maybe he's a little mad. "

The great Gearloose was not expecting lack of precision. He promptly embarks on a series of attempts to best his own creation by learning exactly why the bird is singing. Repeatedly frustrated, he is forced to invent an entirely new machine to translate the bird's voice so he can ask it the question directly. At which point it declaims, "Maybe I'm sad, maybe I'm glad, maybe I'm a little mad."

Which is not a bad reply for an author to give when asked why one writes short stories.

There's certainly no practical reason to do so. Only a handful of writers can make any kind of living from writing short science fiction today. The rewards are in novels. The financial rewards, that is. There are other kinds.

When readers get together, they seem to spend most of their time discussing novels. Short fiction rates a mention only in passing, if at all. But when they're alone and reminiscing, I have this hunch it might be an author's short fiction that they remember most fondly. Something about a short piece's very brevity helps it linger in the mind.

Ideas tend to get lost in a novel, overwhelmed by character or drained by the need to support the plot. In a short story the idea is paramount, not the hero or alien menace. The idea is the story. Brevity lets the author concentrate on the idea to the exclusion of all else. Nor are there considerations of length to worry about. A novel must be a certain length to be acceptable. In short fiction the development of the idea determines the length.

That's why it's so difficult to create real characters in a short tale, where the luxury of time is not present. Where the idea is paramount, the writer must accomplish the task of character description quickly. There's no time for idle chatter or a profusion of florid adjectives. In one story Eric Frank Russell identifies a minor character thus: "He was a real ladies' man; big, handsome, stupid." There you have character created, described, slotted, and dismissed in less than ten words. Not an easy trick to perform. It takes work.

There's something unmatchably satisfying about a good short story. It offers rewards a novel can't duplicate. That's why we order large steaks and small chocolates.' The steak may be more nourishing but not necessarily more rewarding. Sometimes we just crave chocolate.

Just as a writer will find himself compelled to write short fiction even though it may not be practical to do so. I think it makes short stories a purer form of storytelling. Odds are, any short fiction you read was written not because the author thought he or she could make a lot of money from it but because it was a story he or she really wanted to tell or a story that forced itself to be told.

Short fiction is also the abode of today's most interesting fiction. In ten or twenty pages the writer can play without concern, can experiment or try something utterly absurd. Conformity and familiarity are not vital to the success of a four-thousand-word story. A good idea is. If the tale works, well and good. If not, the author has had fun trying. Writers of novels turn to the short form for recreation. I think you're also much more likely to find that an author has written short stories for himself, with less of an eye on potential markets, than is the case with novels. In the end, of course, the readers judge for themselves.

A collection is usually about the same length as a novel. The Metrognome and Other Stories contains tales designed to frighten, to make the reader laugh, to make one wonder or think or just smile. Few novels permit such versatility in so few pages. It's one time when the writer hopes that the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts.

ALAN DEAN FOSTER

Prescott, Arizona