A ROSE FOR ECCLESIASTES, A SHORT STORY BY ROGER ZELAZNY (REVIEW AND RECOMMENDTION)

Today I'll review "A Rose for Ecclesiastes",  a short story written by Roger Zelazny.  Originally published in 1963, this short story has been anthologized many times and it has gained a status of a SF classic. Having read it, I can understand why. This elegant vintage science fiction story set on Mars does not lack in character development and world-building. In fact, it is quite amazing in this sense, especially considering the format it is written. It is not often that you find such interesting world building and character development in such a short story. Moreover, its depiction of Mars as a dying but beautiful society is wonderfully melancholic and even poetical. Zelazny managed to really convey a feeling of an alien culture and world. The plot seems simple enough at first, but there is a nice twist towards the end that made me think of classical short story masters such as Maupassant and Chekhov. All in all, it's a fantastic little story that raises interesting philosophical questions. I read "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" about a month or so ago and really enjoyed it. The full text and audio of this story is available on https://escapepod.org/2014/02/28/ep437-rose-ecclesiastes/. That's the source I'll use for the quotes in my review.

THE STORY IS TOLD IN FIRST PERSON NARRATION 

The story is narrated in the first person by a gifted linguist and poet Gallinger. He is part of a mission studying Mars. The opening of the story finds him busy at work. Gallinger is interrupted in his translating work and called to join in the Mars mission:  "I was busy translating one of my Madrigals Macabre into Martian on the morning I was found acceptable. The intercom had buzzed briefly, and I dropped my pencil and flipped on the toggle in a single motion.

“Mister G,” piped Morton’s youthful contralto, “the old man says I should ‘get hold of that damned conceited rhymer’ right away, and send him to his cabin.–Since there’s only one damned conceited rhymer . . .”

“Let not ambition mock thy useful toil,” I cut him off.

So, the Martians had finally made up their minds! I knocked an inch and a half of ash from a smouldering butt, and took my first drag since I had lit it. The entire month’s anticipation tried hard to crowd itself into the moment, but could not quite make it. I was frightened to walk those forty feet and hear Emory say the words I already knew he would say; and that feeling elbowed the other one into the background.

So I finished the stanza I was translating before I got up.

It took only a moment to reach Emory’s door. I knocked thrice and opened it, just as he growled, “Come in.”

“You wanted to see me?” I sat down quickly to save him the trouble of offering me a seat.

“That was fast. What did you do, run?”

I regarded his paternal discontent:

Little fatty flecks beneath pale eyes, thinning hair, and an Irish nose; a voice a decibel louder than anyone else’s . . .

Hamlet to Claudius: “I was working.”

“Hah!” he snorted. “Come off it. No one’s ever seen you do any of that stuff.”
I shrugged my shoulders and started to rise.

“If that’s what you called me down here–”

“Sit down!”

He stood up. He walked around his desk. He hovered above me and glared down. (A hard trick, even when I’m in a low chair.)

“You are undoubtedly the most antagonistic bastard I’ve ever had to work with!” he bellowed, like a belly-stung buffalo. ‘Why the hell don’t you act like a human being sometime and surprise everybody? I’m willing to admit you’re smart, maybe even a genius, but–oh, Hell!” He made a heaving gesture with both hands and walked back to his chair.

“Betty has finally talked them into letting you go in.” His voice was normal again. “They’ll receive you this afternoon. Draw one of the jeepsters after lunch, and get down there.”

“Okay,” I said.

‘That’s all, then.”

I nodded, got to my feet. My hand was on the doorknob when he said

“I don’t have to tell you how important this is. Don’t treat them the way you treat us.”

I closed the door behind me."

THE NARRATOR IS A LINGUIST ON A MISSION TO MARS

The profession of the protagonist/narrator Gallinger is relevant because he is to be given an unique opportunity to learn 'the high language' of Martians. Gallinger will thus become the first person to learn the High Language of planet Mars. This will allow him to communicate with highly intelligent and sophisticated Martians. Even before that happens, Gallinger seems to be aware of the high expectations everyone has of him: "I don’t remember what I had for lunch. I was nervous, but I knew instinctively that I wouldn’t muff it. My Boston publishers expected a Martian Idyll, or at least a Saint-Exupery on space flight. The National Science Association wanted a complete report on the Rise and Fall of the Martian Empire. They would both be pleased. I knew. That’s the reason everyone is jealous–why they hate me. I always come through, and I can come through better than anyone else."

THE PROTAGONIST OF "A ROSE FOR THE ECCLESIASTES"

Gallinger, i.e., the protagonist/narrator of our story is somewhat of a genius, but not one of the humble kind. He seems to rub the people the wrong way and being privy to his rather self-centered thoughts, the reader can understand why is that. Gallinger is smart and he is keenly aware of his intelligence. Not too considerate of other people feelings, Gallinger is rather ambitious. We can see this early in the narrative. Gallinger is welcomed to the mission by Betty, who conveys rather important things to him about the Martian society but he does not shown any sign of appreciation despite the fact that Betty is an accomplished linguist herself. Instead, Gallinger concludes Betty must be in love with him. Whether this is true or not, it shows our protagonist as somewhat self-centered: "Betty waved as I crunched to a halt, then jumped down. “Hi,” I choked, unwinding my scarf and shaking out a pound and a half of grit. “Like, where do I go and who do I see?”

She permitted herself a brief Germanic giggle–more at my starting a sentence with “like” than at my discomfort–then she started talking. (She is a top linguist, so a word from the Village Idiom still tickles her!) I appreciate her precise, furry talk; informational, and all that. I had enough in the way of social pleasantries before me to last at least the rest of my life. I looked at her chocolate-bar eyes and perfect teeth, at her sun-bleached hair, close-cropped to the head (I hate blondes!), and decided that she was in love with me.

“Mr. Gallinger, the Matriarch is waiting inside to be introduced. She has consented to open the Temple records for your study.” She paused here to pat her hair and squirm a little. Did my gaze make her nervous?

‘They are religious documents, as well as their only history,” she continued, “sort of like the Mahabharata. She expects you to observe certain rituals in handling them, like repeating the sacred words when you turn pages–she will teach you the system.”

I nodded quickly, several times.

“Fine, let’s go in.”

‘”Uh–” she paused. “Do not forget their Eleven Forms of Politeness and Degree. They take matters of form quite seriously–and do not get into any discussions over the equality of the sexes–”

“I know all about their taboos,” l broke in. “Don’t worry. I’ve lived in the Orient, remember?”

She dropped her eyes and seized my hand. I almost jerked it away.

‘It will look better if I enter leading you.”

I swallowed my comments and followed her, like Samson in Gaza. "

GALLINGER IS NOT EXACTLY A NICE GUY BUT HE RESPECTS THE MARTIANS

 Gallinger doesn't seem to be a really nice guy. For example, Gallinger pushes his colleague Betty aside when she hopes to be part of the story. It was mentioned earlier that it was Betty who convinced the others to make him a part of the mission. Betty doesn't get thanked, though. Gallinger wants to be the only one credited with establishing contact with Martians.  However, his admiration for Martian culture seems to be sincere enough. Galling is genuinely interested in Martian language and people. This is reflected by the fact that he has 'swallowed' his comments when Betty said it would look better if she leads him in, Martian society being a matriarchy. Gallinger is willing to respect the customs of Martians, no matter what they might be like or what he thinks about them. In that sense, our protagonist seems eager to establish a real contact with Martians. Perhaps even more eager than to establish a genuine contact with member of his own species, i.e., other people but more of that latter.

"Inside, my last thought met with a strange correspondence. The Matriarch’s quarters were a rather abstract version of what I imagine the tents of the tribes of Israel to have been like. Abstract, I say, because it was all frescoed brick, peaked like a huge tent, with animal-skin representations like gray-blue scars, that looked as if they had been laid on the walls with a palette knife.

The Matriarch, M’Cwyie, was short, white-haired, fifty-ish, and dressed like a Gypsy queen. With her rainbow of voluminous skirts she looked like an inverted punch bowl set atop a cushion.

Accepting my obeisances, she regarded me as an owl might a rabbit. The lids of those black, black eyes jumped upwards as she discovered my perfect accent. –The tape recorder Betty had carried on her interviews had done its part, and I knew the language reports from the first two expeditions, verbatim. I’m all hell when it comes to picking up accents.

“You are the poet?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Recite one of your poems, please.”

‘I’m sorry, but nothing short of a thorough translating job would do justice to your language and my poetry, and I don’t know enough of your language yet.”

“Oh?”

“But I’ve been making such translations for my own amusement, as an exercise in grammar,” I continued. “I’d be honored to bring a few of them along one of the times that I come here.”

“Yes. Do so.”

Score one for me!

She turned to Betty.

“You may go now.”

Betty muttered the parting formalities, gave me a strange side wise look, and was gone. She apparently had expected to stay and “assist” me. She wanted a piece of the glory, like everyone else. But I was the Schliemann at this Troy, and there would be only one name on the Association report!"

A MEETING WITH THE HIGH PRIESTESS AND A BEGINNING OF AN ADVENTURE

Once Gallinger is introduced to the high priestess, a matriarch of the Mars society, he managed to establish a place for himself. Gallinger's fascination with Martian culture increases as he learns more. As he learns more Martian, Gallinger is able to better communicate with the high priestess.  With time Gallinger even grows fond of her. The feeling seems to be mutual, for the priestess seems to trust him (for whatever reason). So, Gallinger sets on an adventure to learn as much as he can about the Martians:

"M’Cwyie rose, and I noticed that she gained very little height by standing.

But then I’m six-six and look like a poplar in October: thin, bright red on top, and towering above everyone else.

“Our records are very, very old,” she began. “Betty says that your word for their age is ‘millennia.”‘

I nodded appreciatively.

“I’m very eager to see them.”

“They are not here. We will have to go into the Temple–they may not be removed.”

I was suddenly wary.

‘You have no objections to my copying them, do you?”

“No. I see that you respect them, or your desire would not be so great.”

“Excellent.”

She seemed amused. I asked her what was funny.

“The High Tongue may not be so easy for a foreigner to learn.”

It came through fast.

No one on the first expedition had gotten this close. I had had no way of knowing that this was a double-language deal–a classical as well as a vulgar. I knew some of their Prakrit, now I had lo learn all their Sanskrit.

“Ouch! and damn!”

“Pardon please?”

“It’s non-translatable, M’Cwyie. But imagine yourself having to learn the High Tongue in a hurry, and you can guess at the sentiment.”

She seemed amused again, and told me to remove my shoes. She guided me through an alcove . . .

. . . and into a burst of Byzantine brilliance!

No Earthman had ever been in this room before, or I would have heard about it. Carter, the first expedition’s linguist, with the help of one Mary Allen, M.D., had learned all the grammar and vocabulary that I knew while sitting cross-legged in the antechamber. We had had no idea this existed. Greedily, I cast my eyes about; A highly sophisticated system of aesthetics lay behind the decor. We would have to revise our entire estimation of Martian culture."

GALLINGER SETS TO TRANSLATE THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES IN THE HIGH TONGUE BECAUSE HE FINDS IT SIMILAR TO THE  MARTIAN SACRED TEXTS

As our protagonist studies Martian, he reveals a bit more about himself. His father was a priest, but Gallinger had no religious feelings himself and felt estranged from his father. He remembers his childhood and youth. Gallinger has fallen in love with the 'word' but not in the religious sense: "I was six again, learning my Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. I was ten, sneaking peeks at the Iliad. When Daddy wasn’t spreading hellfire, brimstone, and brotherly love, he was teaching me to dig the Word, like in the original. Lord! There are so many originals and so many words! When I was twelve I started pointing out the little differences between what he was preaching and what I was reading. The Fundamental vigor of his reply brooked no debate. It was worse than any beating. I kept my mouth shut after that and learned to appreciate Old Testament poetry.

–Lord, I am sorry! Daddy–Sir–I am sorry!–It couldn’t be! It couldn’t be . ..On the day the boy graduated from high school, with the French, German, Spanish, and Latin awards, Dad Gallinger had told his fourteen-year- old, six-foot scarecrow of a son that he wanted him to enter the ministry. I remember how his son was evasive:

“Sir,” he had said, “I’d sort of like to study on my own for a year or so, and then take pre-theology courses at some liberal arts university. I feel I’m still sort of young to try a seminary, straight off.”

The Voice of God: “But you have the gift of tongues, my son. You can preach the Gospel in all the lands of Babel. You were born to be a missionary. You say you are young, but time is rushing by you like a whirlwind. Start early, and you will enjoy added years of service.”

The added years of service were so many added tails to the cat repeatedly laid on my back. I can’t see his face now, I never can. Maybe it is because I was always afraid to look at it then. And years later, when he was dead, and laid out, in black, amidst bouquets, amidst weeping congregationalists, amidst prayers, red faces, handkerchiefs, hands patting your shoulders, solemn-faced comforters . . . I looked at him and did not recognize him. We had met nine months before my birth, this stranger and I. He had never been cruel–stern, demanding, with contempt for everyone’s shortcomings– but never cruel. He was also all that I had had of a mother. And brothers. And sisters. He had tolerated my three years at St. John’s, possibly because of its name, never knowing how liberal and delightful a place it really was.

But I never knew him, and the man atop the catafalque demanded nothing now; I was free not to preach the Word. But now I wanted to, in a different way. I wanted to preach a word that I could never have voiced while he lived."

Gallinger decides to translate The Book of Ecclesiastes in High Martian because he finds it similar to Martian religious texts: "The High and Low Tongues were not so dissimilar as they had first seemed. I had enough of the one to get me through the murkier parts of the other. I had the grammar and all the commoner irregular verbs down cold; the dictionary l was constructing grew by the day, like a tulip, and would bloom shortly. Every time I played the tapes the stem lengthened. Now was the time to tax my ingenuity, to really drive the lessons home. I had purposely refrained from plunging into the major texts until I could do justice to them. I had been reading minor commentaries, bits of verse, fragments of history. And one thing had impressed me strongly in all that I read. They wrote about concrete things: rocks, sand, water, winds; and the tenor couched within these elemental symbols was fiercely pessimistic. It reminded me of some Buddhist texts, but even more so, I realized from my recent research, it was like parts of the Old Testament. Specifically, it reminded me of the Book of Ecclesiastes. That, then, would be it. The sentiment, as well as the vocabulary, was so similar that it would be a perfect exercise. Like putting Poe into French. I would never be a convert to the Way of Malann, but I would show them that an Earthman had once thought the same thoughts, felt similarly."

GALLINGER IS HELD IN HIGH ESTEEM BY THE MARTIAN HIGH PRIESTESS AND THUS ELEVATED IN STATUS 

M'Cwyie, the Martian  high priestess, seems to be satisfied with Gallinger's progress. When she sees him tired, she offers to show him a dance performance and he readily agrees: 

My progress seemed to startle M’Cwyie. She peered at me, like Sartre’s Other, across the tabletop. I ran through a chapter in the Book of Locar. I didn’t look up, but I could feel the tight net her eyes were workings about my head, shoulders, and rapid hands. I turned another page. Was she weighing the net, judging the size of the catch? And what for? The books said nothing of fishers on Mars. Especially of men. They said that some god named Malann had spat, or had done something disgusting (depending on the version you read), and that life had gotten under way as a disease in inorganic matter. They said that movement was its first law, its first law, and that the dance was only legitimate reply to the inorganic . . . the dance’s quality its justification,–fication . . . and love is a disease in organic l matter–Inorganic matter?

I shook my head. I had almost been asleep.

“M’narra.”

I stood and stretched. Her eyes outlined me greedily now. So I met them, and they dropped.

“I grow tired. I want to rest awhile. I didn’t sleep much last night.”

She nodded, Earth’s shorthand for “yes,” as she had learned from me.

“You wish to relax, and see the explicitness of the doctrine of Locar in its fullness?”

“Pardon me?”

“You wish to see a Dance of Locar?”

“Oh.” Their damned circuits of form and periphrasis here ran worse than the Korean! “Yes. Surely. Any time it’s going to be done I’d be happy to watch.”

I continued, “In the meantime, I’ve been meaning to ask you whether I might take some pictures–”

“Now is the time. Sit down. Rest. I will call the musicians.”

She bustled out through a door I had never been past. Well now, the dance was the highest art, according to Locar, not to mention Havelock Ellis, and I was about to see how their centuries-dead philosopher felt it should be conducted. I rubbed my eyes and snapped over, touching my toes a few times. The blood began pounding in my head, and I sucked in a couple deep breaths. I bent again and there was a flurry of motion at the door."

LOVE AT FIRST DANCE- FALLING IN LOVE WITH BRAXA

Gallinger gets to see the sacred Martian dance performed by a temple dancer Braxa. What happens is that our protagonist is absolutely smitten with Braxa the dancer. Once he sees her dance, that's that. Gallinger falls in love with the Martian temple dancer. I particularly liked this scene and the way the dance was described. The description of Braxa's dance managed to be both beautifully poetical and other-worldly:

"To the trio who entered with M’Cwyie I must have looked as if I were searching for the marbles I had just lost, bent over like that. I grinned weakly and straightened up, my face red from more than exertion. I hadn’t expected them that quickly. Suddenly I thought of Havelock Ellis again in his area of greatest popularity. The little redheaded doll, wearing, sari-like, a diaphanous piece of the Martian sky, looked up in wonder–as a child at some colorful flag on a high pole. “Hello,” I said, or its equivalent.

She bowed before replying. Evidently I had been promoted in status. “I shall dance,” said the red wound in that pale, pale cameo, her face. Eyes, the color of dream and her dress, pulled away from mine.

She drifted to the center of the room. Standing there, like a figure in an Etruscan frieze, she was either meditating or regarding the design on the floor. Was the mosaic symbolic of something? I studied it. If it was, it eluded me; it would make an attractive bathroom floor or patio, but I couldn’t see much in it beyond that. The other two were paint-spattered sparrows like M’Cwyie, in their middle years. One settled to the floor with a triple-stringed instrument faintly resembling a samisen. The other held a simple woodblock and two drumsticks. M’Cwyie disdained her stool and was seated upon the floor before I realized it. I followed suit. The samisen player was still tuning up, so I leaned toward M’Cwyie.

“What is the dancer’s name?”

“Braxa,” she replied, without looking at me, and raised her left hand, slowly, which meant yes, and go ahead, and let it begin.

The stringed-thing throbbed like a toothache, and a tick-tocking, like ghosts of all the clocks they had never invented, sprang from the block. Braxa was a statue, both hands raised to her face, elbows high and outspread. The music became a metaphor for fire. Crackle, purr, snap. . .She did not move. The hissing altered to splashes. The cadence slowed. It was water now, the most precious thing in the world, gurgling clear then green over mossy rocks. Still she did not move. Glissando. A pause.

Then, so faint I could hardly be sure at first, the tremble of the winds began. Softly, gently, sighing and halting, uncertain. A pause, a sob, then a repetition of the first statement, only louder.

Were my eyes completely bugged from my reading, or was Braxa actually trembling, all over, head to foot.  She was.

She began a microscopic swaying. A fraction of an inch right, then left. Her fingers opened like the petals of a flower, and I could see that her eyes were closed. Her eyes opened. They were distant, glassy, looking through me and the walls. Her swaying became more pronounced, merged with the beat.

The wind was sweeping in from the desert now, falling against Tirellian like waves on a dike. Her fingers moved, they were the gusts. Her arms, slow pendulums, descended, began a counter-movement.

The gale was coming now. She beganan axial movement and her hands caught up with the rest of her body, only now her shoulders commenced to writhe out a figure-eight. The wind! The wind, I say. O wild, enigmatic! O muse of St. John Perse!

The cyclone was twisting round those eyes, its still center. Her head was thrown back, but I knew there was no ceiling between her gaze, passive as Buddha’s, and the unchanging skies. Only the two moons, perhaps, interrupted their slumber in that elemental Nirvana of uninhabited turquoise.

Years ago, I had seen the Devadasis in India, the Street-dancers, spinning their colorful webs, drawing in the male insect. But Braxa was more than this: she was a Ramadjany, like those votaries of Rama, incarnation of Vishnu, who had given the dance to man: the sacred dancers.

The clicking was monotonously steady now; the whine of the strings made me think of the stinging rays of the sun, their heat stolen by the wind’s halations; the blue was Sarasvati and Mary, and a girl named Laura. I heard a sitar from somewhere, watched this statue come to life ,and inhaled a divine afflatus.

I was again Rimbaud with his hashish, Baudelaire with his laudanum, Poe, De Quincy, Wilde, Mallarme, and Aleister Crowle. I was, for a fleeting second, my father in his dark pulpit and darker suit, the hymns and the organ’s wheeze transmuted to bright wind.

She was a spun weather vane, a feathered crucifix hovering in the air, a clothes-line holding one bright garment lashed parallel to the ground. Her shoulder was bare now, and her right breast moved up and down like a moon in the sky, its red nipple appearing momentaly above a fold and vanishing again. The music was as formal as Job’s argument with God. Her dance was God’s reply.

The music slowed, settled; it had been met, matched, answered. Her garment, as if alive, crept back into the more sedate folds it originally held.

She dropped low, lower, to the floor. Her head fell upon her raised knees. She did not move.

There was silence.

I realized, from the ache across my shoulders, how tensely I had been sitting. My armpits were wet. Rivulets had been running down my sides. What did one do now? Applaud?

I sought M’Cwyie from the corner of my eye. She raised her right hand. As if by telepathy the girl shuddered all over and stood. The musicians also rose. So did M’Cwyie. I got to my feet, with a Charley horse in my left leg, and said, “It was beautiful,” inane as that sounds.

I received three different High Forms of “thank you.”

There was a flurry of color and I was alone again with M’Cwyie.

“That is the one hundred-seventeenth of the two thousand, two hundred- twenty-four dances of Locar.”

I looked down at her.

“Whether Locar was right or wrong, he worked out a fine reply to the inorganic.”

She smiled.

“Are the dances of your world like this?”

“Some of them are similar. I was reminded of them as I watched Braxa–but I’ve never seen anything exactly like hers.”

“She is good,” M’Cwyie said. “She knows all the dances.”

A hint of her earlier expression which had troubled me . . .

It was gone in an instant.

“I must tend my duties now.” She moved to the table and closed the books. “M’narra.”

“Good-bye.” I slipped into my boots.

“Good-bye, Gailinger.”

I walked out the door, mounted the jeepster, and roared across the evening into night, my wings of risen desert flapping slowly behind me. "

GALLINGER DISCOVERS THAT MARTIAN SOCIETY IS A FATALIST ONE

As the story progresses, Gallinger discovers that Martian society is fatalist. They have even finished writing their histories. They have a great belief in their scholars and they have written the final book of Martian history. Therefore, it seems that the Martians believe that their history (and entire species ) has come to an end. Gallinger also discovers that  the Martian men have become sterile and this is what is bringing their species to the break of extinction. Moreover, they believe this is inevitable. 

"A light was switched on in those jade lamps. “Oh, you mean having children!”

“Yes. That’s it! Exactly.”

She laughed. It was the first time I had heard laughter in Tirellian. It sounded like a violinist striking his high strings with the bow, in short little chops. It was not an altogether pleasant thing to hear, especially because she laughed too long. When she had finished she moved closer.

“I remember, now,” she said. “We used to have such rules. Half a Process ago, when I was a child, we had such rules. But,” she looked as if she were ready to laugh again, “there is no need for them now.”

My mind moved like a tape recorder played at triple speed.

Half a Process! HalfaProcessaProcessaProcess! No! Yes!

Half a Process was two hundred-forty-three years, roughly speaking!

–Time enough to learn the 2224 dances of Locar.

–Time enough to grow old, if you were human.

–Earth-style human, I mean.

I looked at her again, pale as the white queen in an ivory chess set.

She was human, I’d stake my soul–alive, normal, healthy, I’d stake my life–woman, my body . . .

But she was two and a half centuries old, which made M’Cwyie Methusala’s grandma. It flattered me to think of their repeated complimenting of my skills, as linguist, as poet. These superior beings!

But what did she mean “there is no such need for them now”? Why the near-hysteria? Why all those funny looks I’d been getting from M’Cwyie?

I suddenly knew I was close to something important, besides a beautiful girl.

“tell me,” I said, in my Casual Voice, “did it have anything to do with ‘the plague that does not kill,’ of which Tamur wrote?”

‘Yes,” she replied, “the children born after the Rains could have no children of their own, and–”

“And what?” I was leaning forward, memory set at “record.”

“–and the men had no desire to get any.”

I sagged backward against the bedpost. Racial sterility, masculine impotence, following phenomenal weather. Had some vagabond cloud of radioactive junk from God knows where penetrated their weak atmosphere one day? One day long before Shiaparelli saw the canals, mythical as my dragon, before those “canals” had given rise to some correct guesses for all the wrong reasons, had Braxa been alive, dancing, here–damned in the womb since blind Milton had written of another paradise, equally lost?"

GALLINGER HAS TO FIND A WAY TO CONVENIENCE MARTIANS TO GO ON LIVING

Gallinger finds himself with an even more difficult task than learning the High Language. Gallinger has to find a way to convince an alien species not to give up and to go on living. He seems to be set with an impossible task as Martians really believe that their time is up. If Gallinger fails, a highly evolved species will disappear forever. 

“When my papers are published everyone on Earth will know that truth. I’ll tell them things Doctor Moore never even guessed at. I’ll tell the tragedy of a doomed race, waiting for death, resigned and disinterested. I’ll tell why, and it will break hard, scholarly hearts. I’ll write about it, and they will give me more prizes, and this time I won’t want them.

“My God!” I exclaimed. “They had a culture when our ancestors were clubbing the sabre-tooth and finding out how fire works!”

“Yes!” I said. Yes, Claudius! Yes, Daddy! Yes, Emory! “I do. But I’m going to let you in on a scholarly scoop now. They’re already dead. They’re sterile. In one more generation there won’t be any Martians.”

I paused, then added, “Except in my papers, except on a few pieces of microfilm and tape. And in some poems, about a girl who did give a damn and could only bitch about the unfairness of it all by dancing.”

ALL IN ALL, THIS WAS A GREAT SCIENCE FICTION STORY!

I will not write about the ending itself because I want to avoid spoilers but I will say that I liked the way the story ended. The plot kept me interesting throughout the story.  There is a little twist at the end and Gallinger gets more than a little humbled. Our protagonist definitely had it coming.  The characters in this story were well written and as developed as one could expect in a short story. You do get a feeling of them and there are some nice surprises as well. As is to be expected, the protagonist of the story is the one with most character development. I'm really impressed with how Zelazny managed to incorporate character development in a short story. 

IF YOU WANT TO READ MORE OF MY ROGER ZELAZNY REVIEWS, HERE ARE THE LINKS:- THIS IMMORTAL BY ROGER ZELAZNY - READING UPDATE : R. ZELAZNY -  LORD OF LIGHT, A NOVEL BY ROGER ZELAZNY-  A NIGHT IN LONESOME OCTOBER, A NOVEL BY ROGER ZELAZNY - THE ISLE OF THE DEAD, A NOVEL BY ROGER ZELAZNY  - EYE OF THE CAT, A NOVEL BY ROGER ZELAZNY

As always, thank you  fro reading and stopping by! Have a nice day and take care.