Rescue Party (1946) | Hacker News Reader

Rescue Party (1946)

baen.com

62 pointsbookofjoe24 comments

The linked story is part of the online version[0] of a Baen anthology, _The World Turned Upside Down_, being a collection of stories that formed the imaginations of the two editors, Erik Flint[1] and David Drake[2]. The site seems to have been created in 2004, and for some reason is sprinkled with nonstandard characters and primitive formatting, which is a shame.

The list of stories in the contents[3] is indeed wonderful. I instantly recognize and remember "The Menace from Earth", "Black Destroyer", "A Pail of Air", "Who Goes There" (the original from which _The Thing_ and many other productions derived) and others.

[0] https://www.baen.com/Chapters/0743498747/0743498747___0.htm

[3] https://www.baen.com/Chapters/0743498747/0743498747_toc.htm

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Flint

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drake

Some of the "non-standard characters" is a combination of incorrect encoding applied to the page, and web browsers apparently not handling certain Latin1 characters properly that should have been decoded right despite charset declaration being wrong (for example code 0xA0, aka non-breaking space).

Namely, the page contains text in Windows-1252 encoding, but declares it's in ISO-8859-1. Most of the characters are the same between the two, but few aren't, like em-dashes (code 0x97) in second paragraph of the preface.

This probably involved whatever pipeline was originally and over time used to maintain the pages from RTF masters that Baen used.

Page source links to a DTD OEB 1.2 doc. Libre Writer does this from time to time when C-c /C-v/ing blocks of text special characters will be left over after the processor undergoes a similar transformation as it compiles Windows-1252, encoding text to ISO-8859-1.

In Firefox, Display -> "Repair text encoding" solved the problem for me.

Thank you! I had never even noticed that menu item.

n.b. the book (ISBN-13 9780743498746) is available used, from many sources for ~$6 inc. shipping, e.g.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/156278324219?_skw=9780743498746

great read, thanks for sharing!

some more fun and short reading:

Report on an Unidentified Space Station by J. G. Ballard https://sseh.uchicago.edu/doc/roauss.htm

The Last Question By Isaac Asimov https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html

For those who enjoyed "Code Three", the author combined it and its sequel into a fixup novel, also named Code Three.

* <https://libbyapp.com/search/lapl/search/scope-deep/query-Ric...>

* <https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6337215W/Code_Three?edition=...>

Much of this story's brilliance lies in just the last sentence. With just one subtle brushstroke Clarke manages a delicious pay-off hinting at a very dark, but expectable¹, outcome.

1: The whole 'humans are assholes'² trope has been explored much more since the 1940s, so I expect the ending might have had even more of an impact back then.

2: Literally, in Spaceballs, of course.

If you like this sort of thing, it’s part of a subgenre called HFY: Humanity, Fuck Yeah. Lots to find from Baen—March Upcountry is one good start, Hymn Before Battle another. Lots of shorts at https://old.reddit.com/r/hfy

That was a fun read.

I'm afraid I spend too much time coding and working on projects. It's the wife that reads every evening. But when HN recommends a short story, I have to stop what I'm doing and give it a read.

Again, not disappointed.

I thought I'd read all of Clarke's stories, but not this one. What a treat!

It's one of his better shorts IMO--which is saying a lot.

That's the first time I've had to use View->Repair Text Encoding on a website.

IMO The story was a little too long for it's conclusion. It needs either a longer conclusion or a shorter story.

Warning to others: this story takes several minutes to read, but ends abruptly and pointlessly without any sort of resolution.

That is really a grotesque misreading of this story.

Do you have an interpretation of your own to offer? I merely posted the warning I would have appreciated myself.

There are a lot of better SF stories that neither you nor I will live long enough to get around to, including many written by the same author at a more-mature stage in his career. This one can safely be skipped in favor of one of those.

Not sure what to tell you. It has a satisfying ending and resolution as far as I am concerned. It's pretty plain on its face; I don't think an "interpretation" is needed.

It's obviously not the best Arthur C. Clarke story, but I don't think it's a waste of time to read it.

It's obviously not the best Arthur C. Clarke story

Exactly, and the ending is only one of several weak aspects. So why defend the story with a vague insult to another reader's acumen when they suggest, justifiably, that time spent reading it may be better spent elsewhere?

Someone unfamiliar with Clarke who reads this piece of junk may decide they don't want to waste even more time with The Nine Billion Names of God or The Sentinel or The Star, and I'm sure we agree that'd be a shame.

I was responding to your statement that the story ended abruptly and pointlessly without a resolution. It doesn't.

In the spirit of HN, I guess I'll ask -- what did you think the point of the story was?

Don't see anything abrupt? Seems pretty typical ending for a common sci-fi subgenre that is still very popular today (I won't give more details to avoid spoilers). Sure, you can continue and make a whole book out of it, but it makes a good self-sufficient short story too.

Perhaps the page got truncated? For me, it ends with word "funny".

No, that's the correct ending. I looked it up (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_Party). Clarke himself gave it a -4:

I don't believe I've reread it since its original appearance, and I refuse to do so now — for fear of discovering how little I have improved in almost four decades. Those who claim that it's their favorite story get a cooler and cooler reception over the passing years.

Here's another PDF: https://escapepod.org/2013/06/18/ep400-rescue-party/

As CamperBob noted below, the last word is indeed "funny."

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