{"id":1310,"date":"2017-03-07T13:00:56","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T19:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=1310"},"modified":"2017-03-05T21:47:11","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T03:47:11","slug":"kuttners-baldy-series-the-pipers-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/kuttners-baldy-series-the-pipers-son\/","title":{"rendered":"Kuttner’s Baldy Series: “The Piper’s Son”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>“The Piper’s Son”
\nOriginally published in Astounding Science Fiction<\/em>, Feb. 1945<\/p>\n

Henry Kuttner wrote a series of stories in collaboration with his wife C. L. Moore about a race of telepathic mutants called Baldies. This series consisted of five novelettes and ran under the Lewis Padgett byline in Astounding Science Fiction in the 1940s. This post will look at the first of them. I’ll look at the rest every Friday and Tuesday until I’ve covered the entire series and the fix-up novel containing them all.<\/p>\n

First a bit of backstory.\u00a0 The setting is about one generation, maybe two, after a nuclear war.\u00a0 Chicago, among other cities, was destroyed.\u00a0 There are strict limits on how large a municipality can grow.\u00a0 Any town that gets too large is destroyed.<\/p>\n

The radiation blast created a number of mutants.\u00a0 Among them are a race of hairless telepaths known as Baldies.\u00a0 They wear wigs and do their best to blend into society.\u00a0 Understandably, they’re feared and hated by a large segment of the population.<\/p>\n

This particular story concerns Ed Burkhalter.\u00a0 Ed is a Baldy who works for a publishing company.\u00a0 It’s his job in this story to help a particular writer overcome some blocks so his book can be published on schedule.\u00a0 These scenes tend to show a lot about what it’s like to be a telepath this world.\u00a0 Ed spends much of the scenes in which he interacts\u00a0 with the author trying to convince that man that Baldies aren’t a threat and why that’s the case.<\/p>\n

The mutation that created the Baldies is one that’s pretty unstable.\u00a0 Many of the Baldies are insane.\u00a0 They’re usually the easiest to spot and are quickly dealt with.\u00a0 Others are paranoid.\u00a0 They aren’t so obvious.\u00a0 And can present a great danger.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore<\/p><\/div>\n

Because of their abilities to read minds, the Baldies aren’t well liked.\u00a0 There are certain things they can’t do, either by law or by social convention.\u00a0 One such thing is dueling.\u00a0 Duels are legal and frequently used to settle disputes.\u00a0 When a belligerent man accuses believes that Ed’s wife has eavesdropped telepathically on his wife and spread secrets about her, he challenges Ed to a duel.\u00a0 Ed goes to his house to try to convince the man that his wife hasn’t read the other woman’s mind and doesn’t know her.<\/p>\n

Of course it isn’t that easy.\u00a0 Unable to convince him otherwise, Ed ends up fighting the man, but with his dagger sheathed, just to prove to the guy that a duel isn’t such a good idea.<\/p>\n

Interspersed throughout the story is a plotline concerning Ed’s son, who is in elementary school.\u00a0 All of the Baldy children are sharing in an adventure about a Green Man.\u00a0 It’s sort of a science-fantasy story they share, kind of a telepathic role playing game.<\/p>\n

Only it’s not a game.\u00a0 There’s a Baldy controlling the storyline, which is an allegory about how Baldies are superior to ordinary humans and should subjugate them.\u00a0 Ed and his friends have to deal with the guy behind it.\u00a0 He’s a threat to the Baldy race, because he is training these children to hate and ultimately rise up against normal humans.\u00a0 The Baldies are few in number compared to the rest of the population.\u00a0 If real, physical persecution were to arise against them, they could be wiped out.\u00a0 Ed and his friends have to do something.\u00a0 In Baldy philosophy, the good of\u00a0 the race comes before the good of the individual.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the most action packed story.\u00a0 Kuttner and Moore certainly wrote others higher on the excitement scale, both individually and collaboratively.\u00a0 The trademark whacky humor Kuttner was often noted for is missing, as is the poetic wordsmithing Moore excelled at.\u00a0 The dark streak that sometimes appeared in their work is there but not as strong.\u00a0 It’s more of a thoughtful examination of what would happen if a telepathic mutation were to arise, the sort of thing Astounding<\/em> editor John W. Campbell liked to include in his magazine.\u00a0 There’s a bit more philosophizing than I’m used to in a Kuttner story.\u00a0 Which may explain why I’ve only read this one twice before, and the others in this series only once.\u00a0 More on that in the final post of this series..<\/p>\n

Am I saying “The Piper’s Son” isn’t worth reading?\u00a0 Not at all.\u00a0 It’s a rewarding tale, no question, and Kuttner and Moore give us lots to think about.\u00a0 The future they present is an interesting one, although I find it to be a bit too tame for my view of human nature.\u00a0 By that I mean I don’t think a race of telepaths would be as accepted as they are, much less as noble minded.<\/p>\n

At its heart, “The Piper’s Son” is sociological sf, not adventure.\u00a0 That’s not a bad thing, but it wasn’t what Kuttner and Moore were best at.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The Piper’s Son” Originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, Feb. 1945 Henry Kuttner wrote a series of stories in collaboration with his wife C. L. Moore about a race of telepathic mutants called Baldies. This series consisted of five novelettes and ran under the Lewis Padgett byline in Astounding Science Fiction in the 1940s. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[232,228,230],"tags":[772,770,771,696,684,835,836],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astounding-science-fiction","category-c-l-moore","category-henry-kuttner","tag-astounding-science-fiction","tag-c-l-moore","tag-henry-kuttner","tag-john-w-campbell-jr","tag-lewis-padgett","tag-mutants","tag-telepathy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-l8","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1313,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions\/1313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}