"The Waveries" is a science fiction short story by the American writer Fredric Brown, published in the January 1945 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It was described by Philip K. Dick as "[maybe] the most significant—startlingly so—story sci-fi has yet produced".^[2]

The story was first reprinted in the 1954 collection Angels and Spaceships.

Plot

In 1947 (then two years in the future) an incredibly powerful Morse code signal begins disrupting radio broadcasts; it is quickly identified as an "echo" of a landmark 1901 Marconi test, and is shortly followed by similar snippets of other early transmissions. All are extremely powerful, blanketing the entire frequency spectrum and repeating in loops ranging from one-half to thirty seconds. After a period of initial confusion, the transmissions are by triangulation found to be coming from the direction of the constellation Leo, but after a few days they become non-directional; a prominent scientist deduces that this means the mysterious radio sources have arrived on Earth.

A consensus slowly emerges that the transmission are an exotic form of life, taking the form of self-replicating electromagnetic wavelengths: each snippet of broadcast represents a discrete entity - a "wavery" or "invader," colloquially shortened to "vader." Scientists cannot guess whether these entities are sentient, and caution that - even if they are - humans would probably never be able to communicate with them, as they are as different in kind from humans as humans are from insects. They do however predict that - as the vaders appear to metabolize electromagnetic radiation - radio will never be available again. Society begins to adjust to its absence, but after only a few additional weeks people notice that thunderstorms are no longer accompanied by lightning; shortly thereafter, all electrical devices start faltering. It becomes apparent that the vaders consume not only electromagnetic emissions, but all forms of electricity. As internal-combustion engines stop functioning, the government declares a state of emergency and launches a crash program to manufacture steam engines and breed draft animals.

The story skips forward a few years: there have been no major societal disruptions, but the US has reverted to a late-Victorian technological level, with the return of steamships, horses, and buggies. There are no longer any means of rapid communication or mass entertainment. Brown treats this as a nostalgic and idyllic development: large cities are gradually emptying out, and the civic lives of small towns are reinvigorated by small newspapers, amateur theatricals, community orchestras, and a general slowing of the pace of life.

References

External links

• The Waveries title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database