Hellhole 2
- HELLHOLE 2 - A black ink and grey pencil drawing on 11 x 14 size coquille board. It illustrates the story, "Hellhole" by David Gerrold, published in "Asimov's Science Fiction Adventure Magazine, Fall,1979.
Once in a while a story is published that contains a lot of the trappings that are associated with SF, like spacemen, alien planets, or time travel, but in my opinion, the story is not actually "science ficion" because the concept on which the story is based is commonplace, as is the plot in this story . . .
"Hellhole," is a story in which a bear-like space-alien crashlands his spaceship on one end of an island on an alien planet. The crash starts a raging fire that begins to spread across the island. To save himself and other creatures who live on the island, the alien runs ahead and starts a controlled line of fire to burn out an area across the path of the approaching fire. When the raging fire reaches that burnt out area it has no more fuel to burn so it dies out and every one on the island is saved. Now, this method of fire control is not new, Firemen have used it for ages. Science fiction stories are supposed to feature original ideas, so I don't know why the editor accepted this story.
When I sent my drawing to the editor I did not include a note pointing out this problem with the story, as I might have done before. I had discovered earlier in my career that editors do not like to be edited. And, I did not want to interfere with the author's sale of the story.
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