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    The General Zapped an Angel: New Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction
    The General Zapped an Angel: New Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction
    The General Zapped an Angel: New Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction
    Ebook161 pages2 hours

    The General Zapped an Angel: New Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction

    By Howard Fast

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    About this ebook

    “The General Zapped an Angel was written for fun, and offers me a chance to smile at the absurdity of human existence. Therefore, these stories of fantasy and science fiction are among the most serious writing I have done.” —Howard Fast
    Nearly forty years after the publication of his first story, “The Wrath of Purple,” in the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, Howard Fast returned to the genre with a set of nine supremely entertaining tales. In this collection, a Vietnam general shoots down what appears to be an angel, a man sells his soul to the devil for a copy of the next day’s Wall Street Journal, and a group of alien beings bestow a mouse with human thought and emotion. Fast, one of the bestselling authors of the twentieth century, skewers war hawks, oil speculators, and profit-at-all-costs capitalism, issues that are still relevant today. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateDec 27, 2011
    ISBN9781453235386
    The General Zapped an Angel: New Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction
    Author

    Howard Fast

    Howard Fast (1914–2003) was one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century. He was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. The son of immigrants, Fast grew up in New York City and published his first novel upon finishing high school in 1933. In 1950, his refusal to provide the United States Congress with a list of possible Communist associates earned him a three-month prison sentence. During his incarceration, Fast wrote one of his best-known novels, Spartacus (1951). Throughout his long career, Fast matched his commitment to championing social justice in his writing with a deft, lively storytelling style.

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    Reviews for The General Zapped an Angel

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    • 3/5
      Fascinating concepts - but every single story ends on a down note. The title story is perhaps the least depressing - at least no one's dead, in that one. Of course, it's not really an ending, just a stop. In most of the rest, someone's dead (or expects to be dead, shortly) - in a couple, the whole world's dead. Apparently this is supposed to carry some sort of moral element - but he doesn't offer any alternatives, or options. He's just telling us that people make wrong choices, and people (the same ones, or others, or everyone) die of it. Comprehensively - ugh. I won't be reading any more by him.
    • 3/5
      This may be the first book by Howard Fast that I have read altho I have vague memories of reading bits of my mom's copy of The Immigrants many years ago. I think that is a book that I should seek out one day - I see it now and then.Fast was not a fantasy or science fiction writer, he was a writer of epic historical fiction, so this little collection of fantasy and science fiction stories is a unique thing and a mildly surprising treat. It was published in 1970 and the opening title story is about a gung-ho 2 star general in Vietnam who likes nothing more than leading his cavalry in the choppers and blazing the machine gun from the side at anything that moves. He's what Tarantino would call a natural born killer. And after returning to base he gets a call from the line that he shot down an angel. A real 20 foot tall angel. A story that I thought among the best was called "The Mouse". There are not a lot of stories here, just nine, but among them are some very good ones, with unexpectedly strong moral and social commentary elements. Amongst the satire and farce is a bit of silliness that may not have aged so well, but there is thought provoking bits as well. These are by no means "great" stories but I was happy to get in the time machine and go visit 1969-1970 sensibilities briefly. I don't think Fast was really trying to write Fantasy or science fiction stories to stand up to much scrutiny - he was trying to write stories to make you look at the world from a different angle, and think about things.Fast writes on the flyleaf: "The book is really not about a general who zapped an angel. Rather it is about the general childishness of man, the only form of life that refuses to grow up."So I took a look at Howard Fast on wikipedia and see this: "Fast spent World War II working with the United States Office of War Information, writing for Voice of America. In 1943, he joined the Communist Party USA and in 1950, he was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities; in his testimony, he refused to disclose the names of contributors to a fund for a home for orphans of American veterans of the Spanish Civil War (one of the contributors was Eleanor Roosevelt), and he was given a three-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress.It was while he was at Mill Point Federal Prison that Fast began writing his most famous work, Spartacus, a novel about an uprising among Roman slaves. Blacklisted by major publishing houses following his release from prison, Fast was forced to publish the novel himself. By the standards of a self published book, it was a great success, going through seven printings in the first four months of publication."You just never know what the library is throwing away and probably shouldn't ...

    Book preview

    The General Zapped an Angel - Howard Fast

    THE GENERAL

    ZAPPED AN ANGEL

    WHEN news leaked out of Viet Nam that Old Hell and Hardtack Mackenzie had shot down an angel, every newspaper in the world dug into its morgue for the background and biography of this hard-bitten old warrior.

    Not that General Clayborne Mackenzie was so old. He had only just passed his fiftieth birthday, and he had plenty of piss and vinegar left in him when he went out to Viet Nam to head up the 55th Cavalry and its two hundred helicopters; and the sight of him sitting in the open door of a gunship, handling a submachine gun like the pro he was, and zapping anything that moved there below—because anything that moved was likely enough to be Charlie—had inspired many a fine color story.

    Correspondents liked to stress the fact that Mackenzie was a natural fighting man, with, as, they put it, an instinct for the kill. In this they were quite right, as the material from the various newspaper morgues proved. When Mackenzie was only six years old, playing in the yard of his humble North Carolina home, he managed to kill a puppy by beating it to death with a stone, an extraordinary act of courage and perseverance. After that, he was able to earn spending money by killing unwanted puppies and kittens for five cents each. He was an intensely creative child, one of the things that contributed to his subsequent leadership qualities, and not content with drowning the animals, he devised five other methods for destroying the unwanted pets. By nine he was trapping rabbits and rats and had invented a unique yet simple mole trap that caught the moles alive. He enjoyed turning over live moles and mice to neighborhood cats, and often he would invite his little playmates to watch the results. At the age of twelve his father gave him his first gun—and from there on no one who knew young Clayborne Mackenzie doubted either his future career or success.

    After his arrival in Viet Nam, there was no major mission of the 55th that Old Hell and Hardtack did not lead in person. The sight of him blazing away from the gunship became a symbol of the new war, and the troops on the ground would look for him and up at him and cheer him when he appeared. (Sometimes the cheers were earthy, but that is only to be expected in war.) There was nothing Mackenzie loved better than a village full of skulking, treacherous VC, and once he passed over such a village, little was left of it. A young newspaper correspondent compared him to an avenging angel, and sometimes when his helicopters were called in to help a group of hard-pressed infantry, he thought of himself in such terms. It was on just such an occasion, when the company of marines holding the outpost at Quen-to were so hard pressed, that the thing happened.

    General Clayborne Mackenzie had led the attack, blazing away, and down came the angel, square into the marine encampment. It took a while for them to realize what they had, and Mackenzie had already returned to base field when the call came from Captain Joe Kelly, who was in command of the marine unit.

    General, sir, said Captain Kelly, when Mackenzie had picked up the phone and asked what in hell they wanted, General Mackenzie, sir, it would seem that you shot down an angel.

    Say that again, Captain.

    An angel, sir.

    A what?

    An angel, sir.

    And just what in hell is an angel?

    Well, Kelly answered, I don’t quite know how to answer that, sir. An angel is an angel. One of God’s angels, sir.

    Are you out of your goddamn mind, Captain? Mackenzie roared. Or are you sucking pot again? So help me God, I warned you potheads that if you didn’t lay off the grass I would see you all in hell!

    No, sir, said Kelly quietly and stubbornly. We have no pot here.

    Well, put on Lieutenant Garcia! Mackenzie yelled.

    Lieutenant Garcia. The voice came meekly.

    Lieutenant, what the hell is this about an angel?

    Yes, General.

    Yes, what?

    It is an angel. When you were over here zapping VC—well, sir, you just went and zapped an angel.

    So help me God, Mackenzie yelled, I will break every one of you potheads for this! You got a lot of guts, buster, to put on a full general, but nobody puts me on and walks away from it. Just remember that.

    One thing about Old Hell and Hardtack, when he wanted something done, he didn’t ask for volunteers. He did it himself, and now he went to his helicopter and told Captain Jerry Gates, the pilot:

    You take me out to that marine encampment at Quen-to and put me right down in the middle of it.

    It’s a risky business, General.

    It’s your goddamn business to fly this goddamn ship and not to advise me.

    Twenty minutes later the helicopter settled down into the encampment at Quen-to, and a stony-faced full general faced Captain Kelly and said:

    Now suppose you just lead me to that damn angel, and God help you if it’s not.

    But it was; twenty feet long and all of it angel, head to foot. The marines had covered it over with two tarps, and it was their good luck that the VCs either had given up on Quen-to or had simply decided not to fight for a while—because there was not much fight left in the marines, and all the young men could do was to lay in their holes and try not to look at the big body under the two tarps and not to talk about it either; but in spite of how they tried, they kept sneaking glances at it and they kept on whispering about it, and the two of them who pulled off the tarps so that General Mackenzie might see began to cry a little. The general didn’t like that; if there was one thing he did not like, it was soldiers who cried, and he snapped at Kelly:

    Get these two mothers the hell out of here, and when you assign a detail to me, I want men, not wet-nosed kids. Then he surveyed the angel, and even he was impressed.

    It’s a big son of a bitch, isn’t it?

    Yes, sir. Head to heel, it’s twenty feet. We measured it.

    What makes you think it’s an angel?

    Well, that’s the way it is, Kelly said. It’s an angel. What else is it?

    General Mackenzie walked around the recumbent form and had to admit the logic in Captain Kelly’s thinking. The thing was white, not flesh-white but snow-white, shaped like a man, naked, and sprawled on its side with two great feathered wings folded under it. Its hair was spun gold and its face was too beautiful to be human.

    So that’s an angel, Mackenzie said finally.

    Yes, sir.

    Like hell it is! Mackenzie snorted. What I see is a white, Caucasian male, dead of wounds suffered on the field of combat. By the way, where’d I hit him?

    We can’t find the wounds, sir.

    Now just what the hell do you mean, you can’t find the wounds? I don’t miss. If I shot it, I shot it.

    Yes, sir. But we can’t find the wounds. Perhaps its skin is very tough. It might have been the concussion that knocked it down.

    Used to getting at the truth of things himself, Mackenzie walked up and down the body, going over it carefully. No wounds were visible.

    Turn the angel over, Mackenzie said.

    Kelly, who was a good Catholic, hesitated at first; but between a live general and a dead angel, the choice was specified. He called out a detail of marines, and without enthusiasm they managed to turn over the giant body. When Mackenzie complained that mud smears were impairing his inspection, they wiped the angel clean. There were no wounds on this side either.

    That’s a hell of a note, Mackenzie muttered, and if Captain Kelly and Lieutenant Garcia had been more familiar with the moods of Old Hell and Hardtack, they would have heard a tremor of uncertainty in his voice. The truth is that Mackenzie was just a little baffled. Anyway, he decided, it’s dead, so wrap it up and put it in the ship.

    Sir?

    God damn it, Kelly, how many times do I have to give you an order? I said, wrap it up and put it in the ship!

    The marines at Quen-to were relieved as they watched Mackenzie’s gunship disappear in the distance, preferring the company of live VCs to that of a dead angel, but the pilot of the helicopter flew with all the assorted worries of a Southern Fundamentalist.

    Is that sure enough an angel, sir? he had asked the general.

    You mind your eggs and fly the ship, son, the general replied. An hour ago he would have told the pilot to keep his goddamn nose out of things that didn’t concern him, but the angel had a stultifying effect on the general’s language. It depressed him, and when the three-star general at headquarters said to him, Are you trying to tell me, Mackenzie, that you shot down an angel? Mackenzie could only nod his head miserably.

    Well, sir, you are out of your goddamn mind.

    The body’s outside in Hangar F, said Mackenzie. I put a guard over it, sir.

    The two-star general followed the three-star general as he stalked to Hangar F, where the three-star general looked at the body, poked it with his toe, poked it with his finger, felt the feathers, felt the hair, and then said:

    God damn it to hell, Mackenzie, do you know what you got here?

    Yes, sir.

    You got an angel—that’s what the hell you got here.

    Yes, sir, that’s the way it would seem.

    God damn you, Mackenzie, I always had a feeling that I should have put my foot down instead of letting you zoom up and down out there in those gunships zapping VCs. My God almighty, you’re supposed to be a grown man with some sense instead of some dumb kid who wants to make a score zapping Charlie, and if you hadn’t been out there in that gunship this would never have happened. Now what in hell am I supposed to do? We got a lousy enough press on this war. How am I going to explain a dead angel?

    Maybe we don’t explain it, sir. I mean, there it is. It happened. The damn thing’s dead, isn’t it? Let’s bury it. Isn’t that what a soldier does—buries his dead, tightens his belt a notch, and goes on from there?

    So we bury it, huh, Mackenzie?

    Yes, sir. We bury it.

    You’re a horse’s ass, Mackenzie. How long since someone told you that? That’s the trouble with being a general in this goddamn army—no one ever gets to tell you what a horse’s ass you are. You got dignity.

    No, sir. You’re not being fair, sir, Mackenzie protested. I’m trying to help. I’m trying to be creative in this trying situation.

    "You get a gold star for being creative, Mackenzie. Yes, sir, General—that’s what you get. Every marine at Quen-to knows you shot down an angel. Your helicopter pilot and crew know it, which means that by now everyone on this base knows it—because anything that happens here, I

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