This is the last post for the short story nominees on this year’s Retro Hugo ballot. “Desertion” was first published in the November 1944 issue of Astounding. It was later incorporated into City. It is currently available in that book (in a slightly revised form) and in Earth for Inspiration in its original form.
“Desertion” is the fourth story in the City series. I’ve looked at the first and second as they are both on the final ballot for the Retro Hugos. The third, “Census”, isn’t on the ballot, but I’ll talk about it when I review City later in the year.
“Desertion” is a brief story that packs a punch. Just so you know, there will be spoilers. Kent Fowler is the head man in Dome No. 3 on Jupiter. That Jupiter had a solid surface was one of the hardest things for me to buy into. They have program in which men have their bodies transformed into a native Jovian form known as a Loper. When the story opens, he’s about to send the fifth man out. Two teams of two men have gone out and not returned. The woman in charge of the conversion, a spinster named Miss Stanley, thinks Fowler is sending me to their deaths. The rest of the crew does as well, especially when the fifth man doesn’t come back.
Fowler decides that he will be the next person to undergo the conversion. He takes his aging dog Towser with him.
Once he and Towser become Lopers, he discovers they can communicate telepathically. They also have better senses than they did in their original bodies. Life is much fuller and senses have a greater range for Lopers than for humans.
Fowler and Towser both decide they’d rather live as Lopers than as man and aging dog. So they go off into the Jovian rain, turning their backs on all they once were. Deserting, in other words.
A few things worth mentioning. First, the last line is a kicker. Second, “Desertion” was the first story written in the series. Campbell held it for over a year. There’s been a bit of speculation as to how much of the series was in Simak’s mind when he submitted it and how much Campbell recognized that it was a later story in a series.
Third, the role Miss Stanley played. She’s not a secretary, she’s not young, and she’s not a damsel who needs rescuing. Nor is she a love interest. She’s a competent technician in a hostile and deadly environment, and I mean a station on Jupiter, not a station full of men. She’s also right on a moral level when she confronts Fowler about how he is running the program. Miss Stanley is a strong women who isn’t a man with breasts. And here I had thought all the women in the old science fiction stories were damsels in distress. Leave it to Simak to present women as real people, and decades ago at that. Too bad some of the harpies screeching that women weren’t portrayed in a positive manner in the pulp era probably won’t read this story.
Fourth, the story notes in Earth for Inspiration mention that this is the same Jupiter in an earlier Simak story, “Clerical Error”. The ISFDB says that story has never been reprinted since its appearance in the August 1940 issue of Astounding. Earth for Inspiration is the 9th volume of a 12 volume set subtitled The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak. The last volume appeared in 2017.
What gives? Has “Clerical Error” been reprinted? Why isn’t it in the collect short fiction? At least I have a complete run of Astounding on CD, so I can read the story.