20/08/2020 Vintage Season - Wikipedia

Vintage Season
For the term in wine-making, see Vintage.
Vintage Season
"Vintage Season" is a science fiction novella by American Author C. L. Moore and
authors Catherine L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, published under Henry Kuttner (as
the joint pseudonym "Lawrence O'Donnell" in September, 1946. "Lawrence O'Donnell")
It has been anthologized many times and was selected for The
Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 2A.[1] Country United States
Language English
Genre Science fiction
Contents Publisher Astounding Science
Fiction
Authorship
Publication September, 1946
Synopsis date
Reception Media type Print (Periodical,
Derivative works Anthologies)
References
External links

Authorship
This story is often said to be Moore's[2][3] or "almost entirely" hers,[4] but scholars are not certain of
how much Kuttner was involved[2] and at least one gives him some credit.[5]

Synopsis
The story is set in an unnamed American city at about the time of publication. There are several
mentions of how beautiful the weather is.

Oliver Wilson is renting an old mansion to three vacationers for the month of May. He wants to get
rid of them so he can sell the house to someone who has offered him three times its value, provided
the buyer can move in during May. His fiancée, Sue, insists that he arrange for them to leave so that
he can sell the house, giving them enough money for their impending marriage.

The tenants are a man, Omerie Sancisco, and two women, Klia and Kleph Sancisco. They fascinate
Oliver with the perfection of their appearance and manners, their strange connoisseur's attitude to
everything, and their secretiveness about their origin and about their insistence on that house at that
time. Oliver's half-hearted attempts to evict them founder when he becomes attracted to Kleph. The
mystery deepens with remarks she lets slip, with the unspectacular but advanced technology of things
she has in her room—including a recorded "symphonia" that engages all the senses with imagery of
historical disasters—and with the appearance of the would-be buyers, a couple from the same country,
who plant a "subsonic" in the house intended to drive the residents out.

Hearing Kleph sing "Come hider, love, to me"[6] from the Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,
Oliver realizes that she and her friends are time travelers from the future. He traps Kleph into
admitting they are visiting the most perfect seasons in history, such as a fall in the late 14th century in

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Canterbury. Oliver happens to see a healed scar on her arm, which she hastens to cover and admits
with obvious shame that it is an inoculation; the reason for her shame will become clear only at the
end.

At the end of May, more time travelers visit the house. A meteorite lands nearby, destroying buildings
and starting fires—the "spectacle" that the time travelers wanted to end their visit with. Oliver's house
survives, as the visitors had already known it would.

The time travelers leave for the coronation of Charlemagne in 800, except Cenbe, the genius who
composed the symphonia Oliver had experienced. In conversation with Oliver, Cenbe admits that the
time travelers could prevent the disasters they savor but do not do so because changing history would
keep their culture from coming to be. Oliver goes to his room, feeling ill.

In a short scene set in the future, the final version of Cenbe's symphonia is performed, including a
powerful image of a face, apparently that of Oliver in the "emotional crisis" induced by his
conversation with Cenbe.

Oliver writes down a warning about the time travelers, which he hopes will change history. However,
he dies of a new plague, apparently brought to Earth by the meteor. The house and the unread
message are destroyed in a futile effort at quarantine.

What would become known as "The Blue Death" enters history as a disaster comparable with the
Black Death of the Middle Ages, both being part of Cenbe's symphonia (as well as the Great Plague of
London). Eventually humanity manages to develop a cure and an inoculation against it, which would
be given to time-travelers returning to this period—but that comes far too late for Oliver Wilson and
countless others.

Reception
Readers immediately acclaimed the story.[3][7] It has been called "great",[8] "perhaps the ultimate
expression of Catherine L. Moore's art",[3] "her masterpiece",[5][9] "hauntingly memorable",[4]
"classic"[10] and "one of the most brilliant stories in modern science fiction."[7] One reviewer praised
its "carefully controlled suspense".[5]

Derivative works
Robert Silverberg wrote a story about the aftermath, "In Another Country",[11] which was published in
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in 1989 and reprinted with "Vintage Season" as a Tor
Double in 1990.[12] Silverberg also took up the theme of time-travel used for tourism in his novel "Up
the Line".

The 1992 American film Timescape, also titled Grand Tour: Disaster in Time, was loosely based on
"Vintage Season",[13] though with a happy ending substituted for the somber conclusion of Moore's
original.

References
1. "Bibliography: Vintage Season" (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?190490). Internet Speculative
Fiction Database. Retrieved 2010-01-12.
2. Asimov, Isaac (1984). Isaac Asimov Presents the Golden Years of Science Fiction: Fourth Series :
26 Stories and Novellas. Random House Value Publishing. p. 548.

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3. Gunn, James (1984). "Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Lewis Padgett, et al." (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=9gxb6WOYmb4C&pg=PA206#v=onepage). In Clareson, Thomas D (ed.). Voices for
the Future: Essays on Major Science Fiction Writers. Bowling Green State University Popular
Press. p. 206. ISBN 0-87972-120-0. Retrieved 2010-01-13.
4. Knight, Damon (1956). "Genius to Order: Kuttner and Moore". In Search of Wonder: Essays on
Modern Science Fiction. Advent. p. 98.
5. Magill, Frank N. (1979). Survey of Science Fiction Literature (https://archive.org/details/surveyofsc
iencef00magi/page/176). Salem Press. p. 176 (https://archive.org/details/surveyofsciencef00magi/
page/176). ISBN 0-89356-194-0.
6. Hider is Chaucer's spelling of hither.
7. Moskowitz, Sam (1966). Seekers of Tomorrow. World Publishing Co. p. 316.
8. Gunn, Voices, p. 208
9. Stover, Leon E. (2002). Science Fiction from Wells to Heinlein. McFarland. p. 107. ISBN 0-7864-
1219-4.
10. Del Rey, Lester (1980). The World of Science Fiction, 1926-1976: The History of a Subculture.
Garland. p. 110. ISBN 0-8240-1446-4.
11. Pederson, Jay P. (1996). St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers (Fourth ed.). St. James
Press. p. 854. ISBN 1-55862-179-2.
12. "Bibliography: In Another Country" (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?42335). Internet Science
Fiction Database. Retrieved 2010-01-13.
13. "Timescape (1992)" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104362/). Internet Movie Database. Retrieved
2010-01-13.

External links
Vintage Season (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?190490) title listing at the Internet
Speculative Fiction Database

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