In my prior blog I made reference to a story (of which I could not remember the title or the author) that I read only once many decades ago and that continues to make a strong impression on me.
I provided a description of the story as follows:
I think the story was called Narwal, but I am not certain of that. I have no idea who the author was, but I remember the story. It just stuck with me. It described a world stuck in an ice age where society had devolved and there was a princess who declared that she would marry the man who brought her the tooth of the narwal. A crowd of young princes, all initially friends, take off in their iceboats to run north to search for the narwal. There were no rules, and they started eliminating each other. In the end only one man brings back the tooth of the narwal and kills the princess with it.
It wasn’t a brilliant story, but there were some scenery descriptions of the iceboats running north that I connected with. It painted a powerful picture that I would love to have seen in a movie and see vividly to this day.
I noted that I tried to locate the story many times and used it as a test of the power of the internet.
My failure to find the story must have thrown down the gauntlet to my big data scientist daughter in law Shruti.
A few days after I posted the blog, she sent me an email:
“Not quite the same ending you described, and I can’t find the full text online but I did find the book that has this short story.”
It was Coranda by Keith Roberts, a 1967 or 1968 story that was internet reviewed by Paul Fraser in his blog in 2021.
I was impressed and asked her how she managed to find it.
“I fed your description into chatgpt and it gave me a lot of fake book names by real authors at first. But googling them helped me refine my prompt on chatgpt which led me to Ice Schooners. I said that’s not quite right then it said my bad it’s actually Coranda.”
The introduction of AI to the internet made the difference!
It was published in “Best SF Stories from New Worlds 3”. Micheal Moorcock created the fictional world in which Coranda is set in his novel The Ice Schooner. His fellow author (and Ice Schooner editor) Keith Roberts was intrigued by that setting and decided to write his own short story using that fictional world which resulted in Coranda that was published in the science fiction magazine New Worlds, which was edited by Michael Moorcock. Micheal Moorcock republished it in the compendium.
All together a strange trip for creating and publishing a story.
I ordered the paperback and reread the story. My memory of the story was not quite correct; the princess was not killed with the tooth of the narwhal. The last survivor simply threw the severed head and tooth against the princess’ door. Also, instead of sailing north they sailed south, which both makes sense, and no sense.
It is remarkable to note that my taste of fiction has not changed. The story is far from the style that I prefer. It is wordy, not solidly science and technology based, and at times confusing. However, after rereading it, I still put it in the category of stories that messed with my head. Moreover, I am now even more impressed with how skillfully it was written. For example, while the iceboat descriptions are not always technically correct and terminology is not always properly used, the author manages to build a story that fully suspends disbelief and builds a powerful vision even to a dyed in the wool sailor and ice boater like me.
This short story is the iceboat version of Mad Max, and Waterworld long before these movies were even conceived. I would still love to see the story turned into a movie. Maybe this blog will connect this almost forgotten story with an enterprising movie producer through the power of the internet and AI.
My prior blog also made reference to the high school teacher who introduced me to Science Fiction. The internet has not found him yet; maybe I will soon, I would like to thank him after all these years.
