Christopher Anvil (real name Harry Christopher Crosby) was born on this date (March 11) in 1925. He passed away on November 30, 2009.
Although he had a couple of stories published in the early 1950s, Anvil’s most productive years were from 1957 through the 1970s. While a handful of stories appeared in the quarter century, he was most productive in the 1960s and 70s.
Anvil tended to approach his fiction with a sense of humor. He’s one of the few writers I’ve found who can make me laugh out loud. Most writers can’t. He’s not as well known as he should be. Fortunately Baen has reprinted pretty much all of his short fiction.
In honor of his birthday, I’m going to look at the story “We From Arcturus”. It’s available in The Trouble with Humans. Spoilers ahead.
This isn’t a particularly long story, but it’s worth reading. It concerns a pair of shape-shifting aliens from Arcturus. They’re an advance scouting team, sent to investigate Earth in preparation for a possible invasion.
After watching a number of television broadcasts, they are ready to leave the mountain where they’ve been hiding and observing and visit the city they can see in the valley below them. They’ve been studying the broadcasts to learn the language and understand our culture.
Other teams have visited Earth, particularly the same area these two are in. None of them have reported back. They wonder if this is because of the attacks Earth cities seem to suffer from giant apes, strange monsters, and other menaces. The TV broadcasts they’ve seen would indicate this is a possibility.
As luck would have it, they decide to leave in a major thunderstorm, so they can’t teleport because of the rain. They adopt the forms of eight-legged creatures from a water planet, but they revert to human form because those creatures can’t walk on the hard, rocky ground.
The aliens have several misadventures before discovering they’re stuck in their human forms. Since only Arcturan forms can operate their spaceship, they’re stuck. The reason they can’t change form and are stuck on Earth is one that would have been clever at the time the story was written. It still is, although the topic has been addressed (albeit in a much more serious manner) in the decades since.
“We the Arcturans” was first published in the August 1964 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow.
I never even heard of Christopher Anvil before.
He’s not that well known these days. As Carrington says, his work is best in small doses. I’m inclined to agree.
Somehow I tend to associate Anvil with the pre-Analog issues of Astounding; although, your dates tell me that I must have read him in the later years as well. (I had a subscription to WoT in the early 60’s; so, I certainly read that issue.) I never bought the Baen books as I feel that Anvil’s works are best savored on at a time. I don’t think I should want to read very many of them one after another. I have similar feeling about the work of Eric Frank Russell.
I love Russell, and he’s one of the closest writers I’ve seen to Anvil. I understand and mostly agree with your position that Anvil is best read in small doses.