was murdered after a prolonged struggle in a public
place, her cries for help ignored by dozens of wit-
nesses who could not be bothered to do even so
much as call the police. Ellison used that incident
to speculate about a new form of horror, one that is
generated by the shortcomings of human nature.
The protagonist is Beth O’Neill, one of those
who watched without acting in this latest incident.
At one point she sensed that the scene was also
being observed by some intelligence other than
human, although she could not put a name to it.
She also paid attention to several of the other wit-
nesses at the time and noticed that in some cases
they seemed to derive a kind of metaphysical nour-
ishment from the violence. Despite her own com-
plicity, she is only mildly troubled, not necessarily
by guilt, but sufficiently that her actions in the days
that follow are atypical. She starts dating another of
the witnesses and stays with him even after he be-
gins to act abusively, although eventually he seems
to sense something in her that drives them apart.
Her life quickly begins to change. The rude-
ness, cruelty, and ugliness around her begin to af-
fect Beth’s own actions. Everything comes to a
climax when she returns to her apartment one
night and walks in on a burglar, who attacks her,
drags her out onto the balcony, and is clearly going
to strangle her. That is when she finally realizes the
truth, that the masses of people jammed into the
city have generated a ferment of emotions that has
given life to a new god, one who demands violent
sacrifices and the devotion of its followers. On the
verge of death, she prays to this new spirit to spare
her and kill the burglar instead, and she is sud-
denly free as her attacker is lifted into the air by an
unseen force and literally torn apart.
The story is meant to be an entertainment,
but Ellison is also openly indicting an unfortunate
aspect of modern life, our willingness to lower our
own standards to echo the attitudes and behavior
of those around us. It is not the city or the god that
is at fault in the story, but the failure of people to
live up to their own ideals.
White, T. H. (1906–1984)
Terence Hanbury White will always be best re-
membered for The Once and Future King(1958),
which actually consists of several shorter novels
that together provide a comprehensive retelling of
the legend of King Arthur and Camelot. His early
work includes some minor science fiction and a
collection of supernatural stories, Gone to Ground
(1935, also published in shorter form as The Ma-
harajah and Other Stories).
The Once and Future Kingincludes somewhat
revised versions of three previous titles, The Sword
and the Stone(1938), The Witch in the Wood(1939),
and The Ill-Made Knight(1940), with a fourth seg-
ment that did not appear separately. The original
version of that portion of the saga was later pub-
lished as The Book of Merlyn(1977), and The Witch
in the Woodwas retitled The Queen of Air and Dark-
ness. The Sword and the Stonewas brought to the
screen by Disney Studios in 1963, and the series as a
whole was loosely adapted as the musical Camelotin- The first volume, which covers Arthur’s
childhood, is a part of his life missing from Thomas
Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur.It is ostensibly written
for children, although that has not prevented gener-
ations of adults from enjoying it as well. Merlin is
Arthur’s tutor, a man who has been living backward
through time and actually came originally from the
present day. The later volumes are darker and more
mature, and White’s reservations about the morality
of warfare become more evident. Unlike many ver-
sions of the Camelot story, which treat it as a form
of historical saga with little or no magic, White’s
version is filled with spells, magical transformations,
curses, prophecies, and the supernatural. The series
is probably the single most widely read version of
Camelot, and the section about Sir Lancelot, The
Ill-Made Knight,is particularly well done.
Although Mistress Masham’s Repose(1946), a
children’s story, is relatively unknown, it is a very
fine semisequel to GULLIVER’S TRAVELS(1726), by
Jonathan Swift. A group of Lilliputians, extremely
tiny people, were brought to England by Gulliver
and are secretly living in a garden, where they are
discovered by a young girl who attempts to turn
them into pets. The Elephant and the Kangaroo
(1947) is a less interesting children’s book in which
a new flood threatens, and an Irishman declares
himself the new Noah. White’s remaining fiction is
outside the genre, although Earth Stopped(1934)
and The Master(1958) are science fiction.
380 White, T. H.