In the Field of Fire

Edited by Jeanne Van Buren Dann and Jack Dann, the story collection In the Field of Fire (1987) brought together 22 short pieces of science fiction on the theme of the Vietnam War. Addressing the lingering trauma of the Vietnam Era through fantastical, horrific, and sometimes experimental writing, the 21 authors collected in this book attempt to find meaning behind this seminal time of state-sanctioned violence, cultural upheaval, and the end of innocence.

Although a detailed look at each of the short stories and novelettes within the collection is outside the scope of this summary, what follows are critically acclaimed highlights of the whole.

Kim Stanley Robinson opens the collection with “The Memorial” (1987), a meditation on the speechlessness that accompanies a visit to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC—a visit that emphasizes the pointless loss of life and the immeasurable possibilities cut short by the war’s casualties.



In his story “Delta Sly Honey” (1987), Lucius Shepard imagines a lonely soldier in Vietnam signaling to the imaginary patrol of the title. Of course, at some point this ostensibly fictive figure signals back to the soldier, inviting him to patrol together. After killing his sadistic sergeant, the soldier vanishes to be with Delta Sly Honey for good, leaving others asking whether he has gone crazy, AWOL, or become something else.

Craig Strete’s “The Game of Cat and Eagle” (1987) follows a Native American soldier as he undertakes a special mission in Vietnam. His assignment is to use his unique bond with an eagle to win the war, but what he discovers in the jungle—a place he’s only thought of as something to burn down—is a culture far too ancient and deep-rooted to be conquered or destroyed.

“Letters from Home” (1987), the contribution from Karen Joy Fowler, is an attempt to figure out a way to reconcile those who stayed home with those who fought the war. Its theme is the distance and otherness of the war to those without immediate knowledge of and access to its physicality. For everyone at home, the words associated with the fighting—“secret bombings, the lottery, Vietnamization, self-immolation, Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh, peace with honor, peace at any price”—carry limited weight, while “Somewhere, I imagine, on the other side of the world, these words meant something. Somewhere they had physical counterparts.”



Richard Paul Russo’s “In the Season of the Rains” (1987) takes the most standard of pulp sci-fi conceits—aliens take an earthling away on their spaceship—and transforms it into a possible escape route from the war. When the aliens land, one man immediately hops aboard to leave the permanent violent and grotesquely abusive warzone that surrounds him and in which he is forced to participate. Ten years after watching that man escape, the story’s narrator wonders whether he should have gone too.

In “Shades” (1987), another contribution by Lucius Shepard, a lab in post-war Vietnam has captured a GI ghost named Stoner in a force field. They invite the Western press, including reporter Puleo, to chronicle the discovery. Puleo, who had been part of Stoner’s unit, watched the man die by accidentally blowing himself up before the platoon was supposed to sack a village—an accident that prevented an atrocity. As they meet, both are weighed down by their wartime experiences; the confrontation enables each to work through the ways the war has been figuratively and literally haunting their lives.

A critically acclaimed standout in the collection is Kate Wilhelm’s story “The Village” (1973), which literalizes the idea that the destruction of foreign wars eventually makes its way home. An American town is experiencing an unprecedented heatwave that brings physical and social decay and a concern that an unknown “they” has been orchestrating the problem. Meanwhile, American soldiers lay waste to a Vietnamese village during a search-and-clear mission; they too worry that an omnipotent “they” has stranded them in an unwinnable and inescapable morass. As the soldiers call for helicopter strikes on the village, the helicopters appear over the American town. As the soldiers and helicopters shoot, beat, and rape the American townspeople, the townspeople are unable to make themselves understood: Instead of English, the invading soldiers speak gibberish.



Dave Smeds contributes the story “Goats” (1987), in which US soldiers observe naval gunner and pilot practice from an uninhabited Hawaiian island. Afterhours, the soldiers entertain themselves by killing the wild goats that roam the island, planning and executing their attacks as though in an active war zone. The orgy of violence is intense and disturbing, but the soldiers seem to do it without a second thought—until the end when the story’s narrator is suddenly paralyzed by a dawning sense of immorality.

“A Dream at Noonday” by Gardner Dozois is a piece of experimental fiction from 1970. In it, a description of a scene from the war is juxtaposed with a soldier’s memories of that day, demonstrating the way some of the man’s humanity was lost.

Ronald Anthony Cross’s story “The Heavenly Blue Answer” (1987) again brings the war home. A veteran returns to America only to discover how much cultural crossover there has been: kids learn martial arts, people enjoy Asian cuisine, and young people subscribe to the Hari Krishna faith. The man finds himself unable to escape the memories of the war and of the old man he killed there.



In Bruce McAllister’s story “Dream Baby” (1987), written after years of research and interviews with veterans of the war, an army nurse who has become a heroin addict to deal with the stress of working in a M.A.S.H. unit, develops the ability to foresee death. A CIA agent tries to use this ability for ill, before being thwarted by the nurse. This is one of the few stories in the collection that ends on a hopeful note.