Short stories: "Men of Greywater Station" and "The Hero", by George R. R. Martin

Before George R. R. Martin wrote his famous A Song of Ice and Fire book series, he wrote a long series of short stories, and collected them into a volume, called The Thousand Worlds. The two I am going to compare and contrast are "Men of Greywater Station" and "The Hero"

Men of Greywater Station is a dark tale about a group of scientists on a faroff planet. All of the animal and plant life on the planet is occupied by a parasitic fungus that takes over the creature and bends them to its will. The station is under constant attack from various fungus infected creatures who try to breach the walls. The men in the station see a troop transport crashing to the planet, and realize that the fungus will soon take over the heavily armored soldiers and assault the station. They kill most of the soldiers before they realize that they were never taken over by the fungus. The story ends with the main character getting infected by the fungus.

The Hero is a story about a very skilled soldier deciding to retire from service and go to Earth, a planet he's never seen, and live out his life on his war pension. His commanding officer tries to convince him to stay and keep fighting. The soldier does not agree, and when he leaves the planet he is murdered on the ship out on the commanding officer's orders.

Both are similar in their subject matter and genre. The Hero is about a military invasion of a city and a specific soldier fighting in it. Men of Greywater station is about a group of scientists being attacked and them trying to fight it off. Both have significant science fiction themes and concepts within them. Both works also have what could be considered tragic endings. The Hero's failure to recognize the more sinister works of his Commanding Officer as well as the scientists failure to recognize that the soldiers lack of infection were both tragic failures that led to disaster.

The two works also differ in considerable ways. The Hero's main character is cock-sure and confidant about all his decisions, whereas the Scientists consider deeply every choice they have to make. Oddly, both approaches lead to failure. The Hero focuses only on one character, with a few others as supporting characters. Men of Greywater Station follows exactly that: a group of men. One of them is slightly more focused on than the rest, but it's still pretty equal.

Overall, I think Men of Greywater Station is the better of the two. It's a little longer and the characters are a bit more developed. It also considers slightly deeper themes and asks more important questions, for example, when the scientists are deciding to go and rescue the soldiers before they get infected, they literally have to ask the cost to benefit ratio of saving lives vs letting them die.

I like both of these stories, and find them to be very well written and developed.