30-Day Wonder

30-Day Wonder by Richard Wilson

Sam Kent, an editor at the World Wide wire service in New York, narrates the day interplanetary contact begins: a spaceship's arrival at Burning Tree Country Club near Washington coincides with a formal note from "Monolithia" to the State Department, and reporter Eurydice (Riddie) Playfair's dramatic on-the-spot account. The aliens, tall and cloaked but able to pass as ordinary men once dressed in Earth suits, quickly secure a meeting with President Gouverneur Allison, gain UN membership through a unanimous Security Council and General Assembly vote, and are granted U.S. citizenship by Congress. At a press conference, their spokesman Reev demonstrates an invulnerable defensive shield and reveals a "mother ship" fleet hidden opposite the Moon, along with hundreds more Monolithians arriving to disperse anonymously into American cities. Sam and his wife Mae watch the story unfold with mixed unease and fascination, including an incident where a jaywalking Monolithian's shield destroys a car that fails to yield. Sam is sent to cover the aliens enforcing a small town's Sunday blue law against a minister and a Jewish delicatessen owner, revealing the Monolithians' rigid, almost mocking insistence on the letter of Earth law — though they pointedly stand aside for volunteer firefighters. Meanwhile, ordinary bigotry surfaces around Sam: a restaurant owner and bar patrons react with racism to alien visitors who appear Black or Asian, and Sam's Mississippi stringer files a story about a near-lynching after a Monolithian passenger asserts his legal right to sit anywhere on a bus. Sam is then abducted from his own backyard by Monolithians while investigating a hidden spaceship, imprisoned in a windowless cell fed only radio broadcasts, and mentally "read" by an alien named Mox, who reveals a duplicate of Sam has been living his life and publicly championing the Monolithians. Coerced by feigned cooperation, Sam is offered — and accepts, while inwardly planning to resist from within — the position of White House press secretary, arranged by the aliens. He learns from President Allison, drinking freely and cynically candid, that Monolithia is effectively running the government and that Allison himself has abdicated real responsibility. World Wide and other press/broadcast outlets are being absorbed directly into the White House as propaganda arms, alienating Sam's colleagues Ian McEachern (who resigns in protest) and Stew Macon. Sam and his pregnant wife Mae relocate to Washington, and Sam is swept into preparations for an emergency summit of world leaders aboard the Monolithian space station Ultra, prompted by a nuclear-armed dictator (Domingo Sanchez of El Spaniola) threatening global cities with "O-bombs." En route to Ultra with Mae's worried suspicions about his secretary Joy Linx trailing him, Sam converses with cynical fellow employees, including the newly co-opted former alarmist commentator Clyde Fitchburn, about their compromised motives for working for the aliens. The Monolithians neutralize the dictator's threat using a "conscience gas" that permanently forces moral restraint on anyone exposed. At the press briefing aboard Ultra, Sam learns from a reflective surface that VIP leaders, including President Allison, are unconscious in one room while duplicates of themselves — including a duplicate of Sam — walk the station. Sam and AP reporter Rod Harris realize the summit's human participants have been replaced by Monolithian doubles, and Sam begins to consider revealing what he knows to Rod as the text breaks off.

By Richard Wilson · First published 1956 · Genre: Science Fiction, Satirical Science Fiction, Social Satire · 30 chapters · 73,377 words

First lines

Yes, an' no, an' mebbe, an' mebbe not. / -- Edward Noyes Westcott, _David Harum_

It was an ordinary July morning. July 22d, to be exact. A Tuesday. Already hot at 8: 20 A. M., which is when I got off the long-distance bus at the Port Authority terminal and walked the few blocks to my office in the Times Building on 43d Street.

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science fiction · classic science fiction · speculative fiction · space adventure · futuristic setting · technology · scientific imagination · adventure fiction · mid-century fiction · 1960s literature · American fiction · pulp fiction

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30-Day Wonder is listed on Textopian as a novel by Richard Wilson, dated 1956 CE.

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