Beware of Fake News: “The Silly Season"
The ROCKETEER is focusing on pulp-era aliens for the next several weeks in honor of the Chehalis Flying Saucer Party.
This week we’ll look at one of C. M. Kornbluth’s short stories—“The Silly Season”— originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fall 1950 issue. The hero is a newspaper man or bureau chief at the Omaha bureau of the World Wireless Service (a fictional “Associated Press”). The title refers to summertime when ridiculous stories often come over the wires. The New York office is demanding copy and our hero lacks material from his area of coverage. His stringers (freelancers) don’t seem to have anything either. He complains that IF there had been a flying saucer story, or a monster somewhere in the Everglades, or even a serial killer he could have piggy-backed. But as it is, he’ll have to fake a lead which is much riskier, the public might figure it out.
As an aside, in 1950 the public did not always trust the media but they still believed them. There had not been enough scandals—yet. Even the quiz show scandals had yet to occur. So the baseline of this story makes some interesting assumptions from our perspective. The main character has to earn a living but is aware that you can only push the public’s credulity so far. The other thing to remember is that in those days reporters were leg men. They went out into the field and looked around, they interviewed people on the phone and in person. You’d travel to get a good story. And deadlines were unwavering. I mention all of this from personal experience as when I started in journalism back in the 1980’s we still did things this way.
Our main character, only referred to as Mr. Williams, hates the silly season. He gets a reprieve from creative journalism in the form of a teletype from Western Union, sending along a bare bones story. A marshal has died in Fort Hicks, AK under strange circumstances. He touched one of a series of “shining domes” that had suddenly appeared in the local area. The lawman’s touch triggers a bright flash of light. When people can see again the man has been burned to death. Williams dutifully writes up the story and wires it to New York, whereupon they begin transmitting it to news outlets across the country. The board chairman of the wire service calls Williams and asks him to go to Fort Hicks to investigate. Our newspaper man gets in touch with a local reporter in Fort Hicks called, Edwin C. Benson. Over the course of the story they become friends. Benson’s an experienced reporter who was hurt during the war (WWII) and although he still writes, is now blind.
Benson had been to the crime scene and got eyewitness accounts describing these hemispheres in a big grassy clearing. They loomed up like houses and reflected the gleam of headlights. Except for one thing—according to Benson the domes aren’t really there! He says the following: “I know when I’m standing in front of a house or anything that else that big. I can feel a little tension on the skin of my face.” The gleaming hemispheres suddenly vanish and by the time Williams gets there are already gone. But the news story makes a big splash nationally inspiring copycats and newspaper cartoons. It takes until Fall for the stories to die down. The following Spring Williams receives a letter from Benson who says that he expects a repeat of the “shining domes” or something like them. He also mentions something odd…that “they” probably felt their try-out was a smashing success and would probably continue on with “their” plans. Williams thinks it’s a joke, especially with the references to “they” and “them” which, he says, is always a bad sign. (“Conspiracy theorists” being less popular at the time.)
But Benson is right. the next “event” happens in July. Big black spheres roll across the Kansas plains and eighty Baptists witness them. One of these men gets within a few feet of a sphere. Williams is out sent to interview him. That man is also blind and insists that the spheres weren’t really there. After a convincing argument, Williams believes him.
This time the excitement doesn’t last as long. People get bored much faster with the spheres and there are fewer copycats and additional sightings.
Benson makes another prediction—a new phenomena will return the following Summer that will be perceptible to the blind. He’s right again! The following August, at a university, several circular pits open up in the grass for about 30 seconds. One of them swallows a professor. This time the story dies an early death and there were no copycats. The World Wireless service sends out a memo ordering everyone who gets a “black pit” story to have it forwarded it to the regional desk where they will decide what to do with it.
Benson continues with his predictions—there would be one or maybe two more phenomena to come. Sure enough, the next July, one hundred “green capsules”, each fifty yards long, appear in an orchard in Hood River, OR. The night man on duty at the Omaha bureau kills the story but leaves it out for Williams to see the next morning. Williams calls Portland for more information but can’t get a connection. He calls one of his stringers in Seattle who starts shouting at him before the line goes dead. Williams calls Benson who says: “I called the turn, didn’t I?” The invaders, he doesn’t know who they are, have made real the story of the boy who cried wolf. The people are the sheep. The newspaper men are the boy, and the invaders, the wolves. He starts to say something more about the wolves when the line goes dead.
The press should have been ready to sound the alarm but by then no one believed them. The cunning wolves tricked them into sounding the alarm too often so that the “villagers” were weary and would not come when there was real peril. The wolves in this case turn out to be Martians who have had humanity “under their yoke and lash ever since.”
Motto: There are those watching who know how to play the “Peter and the Wolf” game better than you do.
I bring up this story for several reasons which seem timely today. A great many people no longer trust the press. Many have turned to the alternative and social medias for their news. There are so many conflicting stories at any one time that people have little idea of what is really going on. And when people are confused they often lash out at each other, since they can’t find the real source. If we did have a world-wide threat, who would you listen to? Who would report it accurately and adequately? I don’t have an answer for that but I certainly hope that the space aliens (if they do exist) do not choose this time of chaos to attack.
This is the Rocketeer signing off for today.