Judgment day

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Judgment Day (Original title: Judgment Day ) is a 1955 published science fiction - narrative of L. Sprague de Camp .

Publication history

The story first appeared in the science fiction magazine Astounding in August 1955 and in the British edition of Astounding in January 1956 . Since then, it has been anthologized several times and included in two collections of De Camp short stories, namely A Gun for Dinosaur and Other Imaginative Tales (Doubleday, 1963) and The Best of Lyon Sprague de Camp (Doubleday, 1978). A German translation by Sylvia Pukallus appeared in the volume Ein Yankee bei Aristoteles (translation of A Gun for Dinosaur ), in the German translation of The Best of Lyon Sprague de Camp , Der Tag des Judgment is not included.

action

In the first- person narrative, the physicist Wade Ormont reflects on whether or not to write a report on a nuclear reaction he has discovered . The reaction, which involves the element iron , which is very common in the earth's crust , as a kind of catalyst , would, if set in motion, be capable of destroying all life. Such a report, Ormont thinks, would initially have no consequences, it would be kept secret and only a few people would know. In the course of time, however, the knowledge about the reaction would inevitably spread further and at some point get into the hands of a madman with the necessary means and that would then be the end of the world.

So why should he share a discovery that otherwise might not be made for centuries - or never? Ormont then remembers his school days, and those memories take up a large part of the narrative. Ormont describes himself as a skinny, unsportsmanlike nerd who quickly becomes the target of bullying because of his tendency to argue and make cheeky remarks at the school he was sent to at the instigation of his dominant mother . On the third day, a sign that reads “Call me Sally” is stuck unnoticed on his back, whereupon he is called “Sally” from now on, which is supposed to label him as weak and girlish. As if that weren't enough, he was regularly beaten, humiliated and stolen from by the school bullies. His reaction is a pent-up, immeasurable hatred that, once it breaks out, terrifies Ormont himself.

At the end of the story, Ormont has come to a decision. The impetus for this was that young people vandalized his house, devastated the garden and damaged his car the night before Halloween . The last paragraph reads:

“That decided me. There is one way I can be happy during my remaining years, and that is by the knowledge that all these bastards will get theirs someday. I hate them. I hate them. I hate everybody. I want to kill mankind. I'd kill them by slow torture if I could. If I can't, blowing up the earth will do. I shall write my report. "

“That was the decisive factor. In the years that I have left, the only lucky thing for me is to know that one day these bastards will get their share. I hate them. I hate them. I hate all humans. I want to kill them all. I would slowly torture her to death if I could. If I can't, it'll have to be enough to blow up the earth. I will write my report "

background

According to Sam Moskowitz , the description of Ormont's school days is largely autobiographical. Like Ormont, De Camp was a precocious, difficult child who was sent to a "strict" school by his parents. In De Camp's case, it was Snyder School in North Carolina , where he "was beaten every day for ten years." As with Ormont, the consequence of De Camp was that he protected himself by appearances of stoic coldness and found it difficult to show his emotions in later years, so that outsiders tended to think of him as cold and unemotional.

As for the scientific framework, contrary to popular belief, it is by no means possible at present to destroy all life on earth, at least not with nuclear weapons . Even the annihilation of all higher life is not possible with the current inventory of nuclear weapons. In order to achieve complete annihilation, a process like the nuclear reaction described in the story would only be sufficient, with De Camp expressly stating that such a reaction is in exact contrast to known physical knowledge, insofar as iron, both from the direction of nuclear fusion as well as from the direction of a nuclear fission represents the end point, i.e. the atomic nucleus with the lowest energy level, that is, both the fusion and the fission of an iron core consume energy and do not provide any.

reception

Judgment Day is a dark, untypical story for De Camp, which is better known for sober, well-researched science fiction or fantasy with a humorous-satirical touch. For this very reason, Avram Davidson declined De Camp's work overall as too lightweight or too unemotional, with the exception of Judgment Day , where he said the story was "so authentic that you want to scream".

Father Schuyler Miller, with whom De Camp wrote his first novel, said in 1963 that the scientist of the Ormont type, who, instead of a divine judge at the Last Judgment , “ judges mankind as it judged him, does not go too far lives away. "

Dave Truesdale discusses the story in the context of the rampage at Colombine High and similar school massacres , in which the perpetrators are teenagers who were tortured and bullied by their classmates, whose hatred of their abusers, which has been suppressed for years, breaks out in a rampage . Insofar as Ormont does not leave it with the slaughter of the guilty, but only finds satisfaction with the annihilation of humanity, Truesdale calls Judgment Day the "ultimate story of revenge".

expenditure

  • First printing: Astounding Science Fiction, August 1955 (January 1956 in the UK edition of Astounding )
  • Contained in: A Gun for Dinosaur and Other Imaginative Tales. Doubleday / SFBC, 1963.
  • Translated into: A Yankee with Aristotle . Heyne (Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 3719), 1980, ISBN 3-453-30622-8 .

literature

  • Brian M. Stableford : L. Sprague de Camp. In: Everett Franklin Bleiler : Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors From the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day. Scribner, New York 1982, ISBN 0-684-16740-9 , p. 182.
  • Charlotte Laughlin, Daniel JH Levack: De Camp: An L. Sprague de Camp Bibliography. Underwood-Miller, San Francisco, California, and Columbia, Pennsylvania 1983, pp. 28, 62, 194-195.
  • Sam Moskowitz : Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science Fiction. Hyperion, Westport, Conn. 1974, ISBN 0-88355-158-6 , p. 153.
Meetings
  • Avram Davidson : Books. In: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , Vol. 25, No. 4, October 1963, pp. 20-21.
  • P. Schuyler Miller: The Reference Library. In: Analog Science Fact - Science Fiction , Vol. 71, No. 5, July 1963, p. 87.
  • Dave Truesdale, "Judgment Day" by L. Sprague de Camp , discussed March 22, 2005 in Tangent .

Web links