For the term in wine-making, see Vintage

Vintage

Vintage, in wine-making, is the process of picking grapes and creating the finished product . A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown and harvested in a single specified year. In certain wines, it can denote quality, as in Port wine, where Port houses make and...

.

"Vintage Season" is a science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novella

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

 by Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and horror.-Early life:Henry Kuttner was born in Los Angeles, California in 1915...

 and Catherine L. Moore (under the joint pseudonym "Lawrence O'Donnell"). It has been anthologized many times and was selected for The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 2A.

Authorship

This story is often said to be Moore's or "almost entirely" hers, but scholars are not certain of how much Kuttner was involved and at least one gives him some credit.

Synopsis

The story is set in an unnamed American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 city, in May at about the time of publication. There are several mentions of how beautiful the weather is.

Oliver Wilson has rented an old mansion to three vacationers for the month of May. He wants to get rid of them so he can sell the house to someone who has offered him three times its value, provided the buyer can move in during May. His fiancée, Sue, insists that he arrange for them to leave, so that he can sell the house, giving them enough money for their impending marriage.

The tenants are a man, Omerie Sancisco, and two women, Klia and Kleph Sancisco. They fascinate Oliver with the perfection of their appearance and manners, their strange connoisseur's attitude to everything, and their secretiveness about their origin and about their insistence on that house at that time. Oliver's half-hearted attempts to evict them founder when he becomes attracted to Kleph. The mystery deepens with remarks she lets slip, with the unspectacular but advanced technology of things she has in her room—including a recorded "symphonia" that engages all the senses with imagery of historical disasters—and with the appearance of the would-be buyers, a couple from the same country, who plant a "subsonic" in the house intended to drive the residents out.

Hearing Kleph sing "Come hider, love, to me" from the Prologue to Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...

's Canterbury Tales, Oliver realizes that she and her friends are time travel

Time travel

Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...

ers from the future. He traps Kleph into admitting they are visiting the most perfect seasons in history, such as a fall in the late 14th century in Canterbury

Canterbury

Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....

.

At the end of May, more time travelers visit the house. A meteorite

Meteorite

A meteorite is a natural object originating in outer space that survives impact with the Earth's surface. Meteorites can be big or small. Most meteorites derive from small astronomical objects called meteoroids, but they are also sometimes produced by impacts of asteroids...

 lands nearby, destroying buildings (but Oliver's house survives) and starting fires.

The time travelers leave for the coronation of Charlemagne

Charlemagne

Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...

 in 800, except Cenbe, the genius who composed the symphonia Oliver had experienced. In conversation with Oliver, Cenbe admits that the time travelers could prevent the disasters they savor but do not do so because changing history would keep their culture from coming to be. Oliver goes to his room, feeling ill.

In a short scene set in the future, the final version of Cenbe's symphonia is performed, including a powerful image of what is apparently Oliver's face in the "emotional crisis" induced by his conversation with Cenbe.

Oliver writes down a warning about the time travelers, which he hopes will change history. However, he dies of a new plague, and the house and the unread message are destroyed in a futile attempt at quarantine.

Reception

Readers immediately acclaimed the story. It has been called "great", "perhaps the ultimate expression of Catherine L. Moore's art", "her masterpiece", "hauntingly memorable", "classic" and "one of the most brilliant stories in modern science fiction." One reviewer praised its "carefully controlled suspense".

Derivative works

Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg is an American author, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple nominee of the Hugo Award and a winner of the Nebula Award.-Early years:...

 wrote a story about the aftermath, "In Another Country", which was published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in 1989 and reprinted with "Vintage Season" as a Tor Double

Tor Double Novels

Tor Doubles are a series of science fiction books published by Tor Books between 1988 and 1991, mostly in tête-bêche format. The series was inspired by the Ace Doubles, published between 1952 and 1973.- Titles in the series :...

 in 1990.

The 1992 American film Timescape

Timescape (1992 film)

Timescape, released on video as Grand Tour: Disaster in Time, is a 1992 American science fiction film by Director David Twohy. This time-travel-themed film is based on the novel Vintage Season by Henry Kuttner andC.L...

, also titled Grand Tour: Disaster in Time, was loosely based on "Vintage Season".