Calories (story)

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"Calories" is a science fiction short story written by L. Sprague de Camp, a story in his Viagens Interplanetarias series. It was first published under the title "Getaway on Krishna" in the magazine Ten Story Fantasy in the issue for Spring, 1951. It first appeared in book form under the present title in the collection Sprague de Camp's New Anthology of Science Fiction, published simultaneously in hardcover by Hamilton and in paperback by Panther Books in 1953.

[edit] Plot summary

This early Viagens story on the planet Krishna is something of a curiosity, being one of de Camp's set-piece gimmick yarns, a specialty of his at the beginning of his career but atypical of the sword and planet Krishna tales. It focuses on a long pursuit by the protagonist of a fugitive by sled over the arctic ice, testing the endurance of both. It ends only when the hero finally halts and does a slide-rule calculation of the calories his quarry must have burned. Determining there is no possibility of his foe returning to more temperate climes before perishing, he abandons the chase and goes back the way he came to ensure his own survival. The life-and-death struggle the story was apparently building up to is precluded by this display of cleverness.

The use of the slide-rule, a commonplace of mid-twentieth century science fiction, badly dates the story, as the slide-rule were made obsolete by the unanticipated hand-held calculator within a quarter century. On the other hand, it could be argued that Krishna, which de Camp conceives of a backward world under a technological blockade to keep its natives from killing each other with borrowed advanced technology, is just the sort of place where such a non-technological calculating device would be revived.

[edit] Setting

The planet Krishna is de Camp's premier creation in the Sword and Planet genre, representing both a tribute to the Barsoom novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs and an attempt to "get it right", reconstructing the concept logically, without what he regarded as Burroughs' biological and technological absurdities.