"Cindy had a wonderful ability to be amused by things."

December 7, 2021 7:43 AM

"Against Babylon" by Robert Silverberg -- published May 1986 in OMNI (previously) -- is an atmospheric science fiction story of brushfire season in Southern California and a pilot who misses his wife.

From "Against Babylon":

He sometimes felt that the trashiness bothered him more than the out-and-out evil......He came from the Valley, and what he meant by the Valley was the great San Joaquin, out behind Bakersfield, and not the little, cluttered San Fernando Valley they had here. But L.A. was Cindy’s city, and Cindy loved L.A. and he loved Cindy, and for Cindy’s sake he had lived here seven years, up in Laurel Canyon amidst the lush, green shrubbery, and for seven Octobers in a row he had gone out to dump chemical retardants on the annual brushfires.... You had to accept your responsibilities, Carmichael believed.

This post is part of a week of highlighting short speculative fiction stories published by online magazines that are no longer publishing, or that are on hiatus, but whose interesting archives remain online! OMNI is sort of an edge case here. It was originally a print magazine. Its website seems to be on hiatus; a few pieces of fiction from their archives are available to read free online.

posted by brainwane (13 comments total)

Didn't this get turned into a novel? I'm positive I read this before, but as the introduction to a novel and not a standalone story.
posted by fortitude25 at 8:37 AM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

This post is part of a week of highlighting short speculative fiction stories published by online magazines that are no longer publishing, or that are on hiatus, but whose interesting archives remain online! OMNI is sort of an edge case here.

My favorite OMNI short story was always Sandkings by some guy called George R. R. Martin from the August 1979 issue.
posted by fairmettle at 8:48 AM on December 7, 2021 [6 favorites]

fortitude25: I just looked up this story on ISFDB and you're right! This story was part of the basis for his 1998 novel The Alien Years.
posted by brainwane at 8:53 AM on December 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

Another great find, brainwane. As I read it I kept thinking how much it reminded me of short pulp sci-fi from the 1950s before then looking up Silverberg and realising well, yes, obviously it does!

And you have sent me down the rabbit hole of back issues of OMNI now. Time to go searching for articles by M.F. Luder...
posted by greycap at 9:12 AM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

Oh I love this story. I ran across it in a “best of the year” anthology and it was maybe my favorite in the whole collection. IIRC the novel expansion does away with some of the ambiguity I loved in the story, which is a bit of a shame.

Other great Silverberg stories I’ve run across are Sailing to Byzantium, about a man who is resurrected in the distant future as the ward/lover of immortal Eloi-esque future humans, who travel endlessly around recreations of historical cities; and Chiprunner, about a psychiatrist trying to help a boy who has become obsessed with the delusional notion of shrinking himself down to the size of a microchip.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:54 AM on December 7, 2021

I am curious showbiz_liz -- what do you find ambiguous in the story? Like, how Carmichael is going to endure the loss of his wife? Or the fate of Los Angeles? I'm curious -- maybe I missed something...
posted by brainwane at 10:02 AM on December 7, 2021

More the nature and ultimate goals of the aliens—I believe the story leaves that very much up to interpretation and the novel clarifies it.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:08 AM on December 7, 2021

Oh right! The aliens! I had completely slipped past the idea that we might someday understand, for instance, their motives! Uh I'm not sure what this says about me and my appetite for perhaps undue acceptance....
posted by brainwane at 10:25 AM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

Good catch, brainwane.
posted by doctornemo at 10:35 AM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

Someone messaged me to point out that the print run of Omni is available via the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/omni-archive
posted by brainwane at 11:11 AM on December 7, 2021 [3 favorites]

Focusing on reading is hard lately, but seeing your posts these many weeks, day after day, brainwane, eventually got me to start clicking and reading a few stories. I *especially* liked Unit Two Does Her Makeup. And Omni! I was reading it when I was 12 or 13. I finished the Silverberg and I’m going to go poke around there now. Thank you for the steady drumbeat of encouragement.
posted by pickles_have_souls at 11:46 AM on December 7, 2021 [5 favorites]

Theme of this story is similar to Tiptree's The Women Men Don't See.

Silverberg has an interesting career; Classic Sci-Fi, then dark New-Wave-ish Sci-Fi, then Fantasy-Sci-Fi...
posted by ovvl at 3:17 PM on December 7, 2021

Dear lord how much I loved OMNI as a kid! And the fiction was always accompanied by art that blew my little mind. And of course the puzzle page is where I learned about Focus Ranch, where the sons raise meat.
posted by ejs at 7:53 PM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]