THE CENTURY'S BEST HORROR FICTION #52: A review of "I Am Nothing" by Eric Frank Russell

Here Pelan makes another odd choice. Yet again, he chooses a story that would be more at home in a book called, say, THE CENTURY’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION. Yet there is something about it, completely intangible, that leans toward the darkness of horror.



Meet David Korman. He’s a very important military man. A perfect physical specimen, he is feared by all, including his own wife. He is a cold, calculating man who has no problem with putting his own son in clear and immediate danger by ordering him to the front of a planetary assault on a place called Lani. He does this because he wants to show the world that his son is out there, fighting with the other men and taking the same risks. It’s a morale booster, in other words. When a subordinate asks him what if his son dies in battle, David isn’t concerned. After all, if young Reed Korman dies, it will be even more effective for morale.


As a child, he desperately feared his own parents, and when they died, he viewed it as a “vast relief.” Now, he knows it’s his time in the spotlight. It’s his turn to be feared, just as it will one day be Reed’s turn. For now, he just wants to be obeyed and to have the universe shape itself according to his will.


Russell has truly created a bastard with this guy. It’s shocking how unfeeling he is toward everybody. There is no passion in him, only strength and the will to be stronger (and, of course, to belittle the weak). When his son sends a Lanian girl back home with the request that his parents look after her, David loses it. He instantly assumes his son has fallen in love with a Lanian girl, and that she will turn him into a pantywaist and therefore chisel her way into the Korman family. When he meets with her, he has every intention of cutting her down to size before sending her back home.


But then he sees she’s just an eight-year-old kid, and she is so meek she doesn’t even speak. He is shocked by her submissiveness, and something inside of him softens. He can’t get his mind around this pitiful creature, but one thing is for sure: he instructs his wife to bring her back to their place. They’ll be taking care of her after all.


What an amazing and complex character Russell has come up with! The main mystery of this story is, why does he feel this weakening toward this girl? At one point, he even takes mercy on the Lanians by negotiating with them, rather than wiping them out, like he’d intended. What’s going on here?


SPOILER ALERT: Maybe you’ve figured out why already, but here are a few more things to think about. He softened up to the point of getting a shrink to talk to the kid. The doctor reports back with a grim realization: she has told him, through writing, that she believes herself to be nothing.


When you think about it, David is essentially the same way. He is nothing, too, and at some level he recognizes this, hence his weakening. He’s a hard-ass who demands that everyone fear and obey him, and for what? Sure, he’s made a powerful man out of himself, but he has no passion. When he wanted to marry his wife, he simply said to her, “Mary, I wish to marry you.” When he wanted to have a kid, he simply said, “Mary. I want a son.” There’s nothing in this guy. Absolutely nothing.


In the very end, he realizes this, and it cripples him. In one of the most beautiful, sorrowful scenes in this anthology, she comforts him in this sudden, scary knowledge, and it’s just too overwhelming for him. “Something within him rapidly became too big to contain.” What a glorious way of showing someone who wants to weep, but tries to suppress it with all of his will.


He breaks down, and they comfort each other in their nothingness. When you think about it, there is one fear more introspectively larger than the fear of the unknown: the fear that you are insignificant. It is this dark undertone which qualifies this story as horror. END OF SPOILERS.


While this horror story masquerades as an SF story, there is one truth that becomes apparent: this transcends both genres and becomes something different. Something powerful. Something about humanity. There is a lot to be found in this tale. Don’t miss it.

[I am completely uncertain as to where this was first published.  To the best of my research, it seems that this work first appeared in ASTOUNDING.  If anyone knows better, please let me know.  Also, it cannot be read online at this time.]