The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume I edited by Robert Silverberg - Book Report #167

I've decided to collect all the reviews of each individual story from this anthology into one post.

This may make it easier to read my thought on the book instead of trying to search out each story from the blog.

Fun fact:  I started to read this book in August of 2012.  That's right, it took me nearly five years to get through it.

A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Twilight by John W. Campbell

Helen O'Loy by Lester del Rey

The Roads Must Roll by Robert A. Heinlein

Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon

Nightfall by Isaac Asimov

The Weapon Shop by A. E. van Vogt

Mimsy Were the Borogoves by Lewis Padgett

Huddling Place by Clifford D. Simak

Arena by Fredric Brown

First Contact by Murray Leinster

That Only A Mother by Judith Merril

Scanners Live in Vain by Cordwainer Smith

Mars is Heaven! by Ray Bradbury

The Little Black Bag

Born of Man and Woman by Richard Matheson

Coming Attraction by Fritz Leiber

The Quest For Saint Aquin by Anthony Boucher

Surface Tension by James Blish

The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke

It's A Good Life by Jerome Bixby

The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin

Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bester

The Country of the Kind by Damon Knight

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

A Rose for Ecclesiastes by Roger Zelazny

A Rose for Ecclesiastes by Roger Zelazny

A poet laureate is sent to Mars to translate ancient religious Martian texts.

While he is there he discovers the fate of the inhabitants and falls in love with one.

Through his experience he finds his humanity.

The poet, who was also the narrator, was an unlikable person; difficult and arrogant.

To be honest the story did not work for me.  I simply found myself uninterested in this character.

Roger Zelazny - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Zelazny#Bibliography

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

This is a real hart-ripper.

Charlie is a mentally challenged adult working as a janitor in a factory.

One day he has the opportunity to have an operation that will make him smart.

Throughout the story he is compared to a  lab mouse, Algernon, who has had the same operation before Charlie.

You already know how this will go; whatever happens to the mouse eventually happens to Charlie.

The story was gentle, hopeful and tragic.

It was a terrific read.

But now I feel I need a breath of fresh air.

Daniel Keyes - http://www.danielkeyesauthor.com/dksbio.html

And - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Keyes

The Country of the Kind by Damon Knight

This was a quick and odd little one.

In a society where violence and cruelty have been eliminated (genetically, I suppose) what does a community do with a person who has crossed a line that is incomprehensible and thought to have been left generations behind?

Our narrator committed an act of violence as a result of passionate youthful emotion.  But because cruelty has been eliminated from society they could not imprison him and instead set him free.

He as genetically altered so as not to be able to commit the same kind of crime again but in crafting their sentence they inflicted a subtler kind of cruelty.

In the story we get to see how our narrator has adapted and learned to cope with his unique situation.

It was not one of my favourites but writing this post has helped me to understand it better.

It was certainly thought-provoking.

Damon Knight

Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bester

51/150/2016

This one really did not work for me.

At first I just found it confusing as the narrator switched from one character to the next to third person omniscient; switching perspectives, even within one sentence, from the android to it's human owner.

We follow the pair from planet to planet as the human tries to cover up for the actions of the android.

It was all a bit forced and gimmicky.

The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin

46/150/2016

I was not looking forward to reading this again.

It is so well written and stands the test of time so well that every word filled me with terror.

I've reviewed this once before, see it HERE and I have listened to it in podcast form.  Any way you slice this it is an exceptional example of hard science fiction.

A young girl stows away on an Emergency Dispatch Ship to surprise her brother who is on the same planet as the ship is headed.

Not knowing there are strict limitations to the payload aboard these EDS, when she is discovered the sad, lonely, cold truth of it comes bearing down.

This story is head and shoulders at the peak of the form.


My heart raced the whole time I read it even though I knew what was going to happen next.

This makes me want to search out other stories by Godwin.

It's A Good Life by Jerome Bixby - A Short Story Review

43/150/2016

This read like a Steven King novel.

A creepy little kid has special powers to control any living thing.  He can just "think" his way to another place or to kill anything or anyone that annoys him.

See how the small town, where he lives, deals with his abilities.

Yup, creepy.

Well done.

Jerome Bixby -  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Bixby

The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke - A Short Story Review

41/150/2016

The high lama of Tibet needs a computer to churn out every possible name of God.

Why?

Well, that doesn't matter when you can sell a new Mark V computer.

It's not long before we find out why and the results are very interesting.

Clarke had a knack.

This anthology continues to delight.

Surface Tension by James Blish - A Short Story Review

37/150/2016

The story begins with a crashed seed-ship on a new world that was meant to be a new human colony.

With the ship smashed and the cargo nearly destroyed the captain an crew come up with an inventive way of completing their mission.

The story then moves a pivotal moment in the history of these new life forms the human created.

I was, at first instantly bored by the story, it was just another "look how strange my aliens are" tale.  But then a very human adventure began and a familiar story of evolution repeated itself on this new world.

In the end I found the story to be very interesting indeed.

I kept reminding my self of what the influential editor, Gardner Dozois once said; "The nice thing about short stories, even the bad ones, is that they are short."  (Or something along those lines.)

This kept me reading and I am happy I did.

It awoke the sense of wonder of how incredibly big this story was.

Terrific.  A highlight of the collection.

The Quest For Saint Aquin by Anthony Boucher - A Short Story Review

34/150/2016

A post apocalyptic story of a priest on a mission to find the tomb of St. Aquin.

It is a strange journey through the fringes of the blasted landscape of the western coast of America.

The role of religion has changed.  Technology has progressed.  Attitudes may not have.

Interesting friends are made and the ultimate discovery needs contemplation.

It's not surprising that there are so many dystopian entries in this volume; we are only five or six years post World War II and the Cold War is dominating public thought.

As I work my way through the pages I find myself sighing whenever I come across this kind of story.

I read them, and they are all excellent, it's just I miss the sense of wonder that I like best about science fiction.

In any case it was a good story and I felt it would have made a damn good novel.  I liked Father Thomas and felt he was good company in this strange environment.

Hard Cover

Paperback

Anthony Boucher

 

Coming Attraction by Fritz Leiber - A Short Story Review

31/150/2016

Set in a post World War Three United States, we follow a British man visiting what is left of New York city.

While on the street he intervenes to help a young woman from an attempted hit and run.

From that moment on we are treated to a story that reveals how much American society has changed.

It was so strange that it reminded me of the Judge Dredd series.

The protagonist does his best to help the woman but circumstances are much more complicated than first thought.

It was a good story but the open-ended conclusion left me wanting a bit more.

Fritz Leiber

Galaxy Science Fiction - November 1950

Born of Man and Woman by Richard Matheson - A Short Story Review

30/150/2016

This was a horrid little tale.

By that I simply mean the writing was crisp and brought me right into that little, terrible basement where the story takes place.

It was stark and unapologetic and brilliantly written.  But, being confronted with the cold hatred of the two antagonists, made me hate being human.

The author had skills to make me feel so strongly in only three and a half pages.

Excellent read.

It will stay with you.

The Little Black Bag - A Short Story Review

29/150/2016

A little bit of time travel coupled with a little bit of dystopian present.  With the present being the 1940's

What happens to a down-on-his luck family doctor when a highly advanced doctors' black bag is sent to him from the future?

At first the author sets up a pretty bleak future for mankind but then never really follows up on it.  He does, however, present us with a hopeful look at what can happen when a person's self-esteem is restored.

A good read.

C. M. Kornbluth

Mars is Heaven! by Ray Bradbury - A Short Story Review

28/150/216

This was a fun story, then creepy.

A mission to Mars!

A landing on Mars!  In the middle of an American small town!

Excuse me?  What?

The air is breathable too.  The captain and two officers leave the ship to investigate.  What they find is peculiar to say the least.  While they try to rationalize what they see I was left with the feeling that something was terribly wrong here.

When the captain figures it out, well, it's a bit too late.

The only problem that I had with the story came from the first paragraph, where it stated that this was the third mission to the planet.  How could they not have communicated with the firs two missions?

The only explanation I can come up with comes from the publication date, 1948.  Sputnik launched in 1957 and Echo 1 not until 1960.  At that time only radio and the telephone provided the quickest communications.  But without the infrastructure of wires and radio towers, even terrestrial exploration would go months without communication with the outside world, so why not a trip to Mars?

Reading these old stories has to come with a certain forgiveness because they are a product of their times.

This was an excellent story.

Ray Bradbury website - http://www.raybradbury.com/

Ray Bradbury

Planet Stories Fall 1948

Scanners Live in Vain by Cordwainer Smith - A Short Story Review

Oh my God!  It's the freaking Borg!

Yes my friends, this story first saw the light of day in 1950, although it shows a copyright date of 1946, and tells the story about one Scanner on a very important day.  Scanners are part robot part human and are tasked with ensuring humans are safe during space flight.  Humans travel in suspended animation while the Scanners look after the ship functions.  Humans have spread out to other star systems without the ability to travel faster than light.  Without constant oversight trips of this length would be incredibly dangerous.

The story does not go into how the Scanners came to be but we do know that some Scanners have been forced into existence; criminals have undergone the procedure but there are some people who volunteered to be transformed.  In all of this a Scanners' humanity is not lost however they spend most of their time in a robot state.  A scanner can enjoy a type of holiday (or shore leave) by undergoing a temporary procedure that restores his humanity and full cognitive function.

We follow Martel, who is on his shore leave at a critical time in the history of Scanners.  By this time in the future Scanners occupy a strange position in human society, neither part of nor excluded from it.  Along comes a scientist who discovers FTL and threatens the Scanners way of life.

As in all of these vintage stories, I first found the language a bit stiff but it did not take long to get past it.  I just loved this early take on a species that Star Trek fans love -  The Borg.  These guys are definitely just like the Borg; surgically altered to be part machine and part human, allowing them to work in space unprotected, making long-duration space flight possible.

I just love discovering stories like this one; it goes to show that some things we thought were completely original have been around for longer than we imagined.

It was a fun read.

Smith's website is HERE.

Cordwainer Smith

Fantasy Book No. 6

That Only A Mother by Judith Merril - A short story review

This should really be called flash fiction coming in at only ten pages. Set in 1948, present day for when it was published, it is an alternate history story speculating on what life would be like in the USA after it was hit with nuclear bombs, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In particular it focuses on babies born after the parents were exposed to radiation.

Thank goodness the story was so short because the trauma of mutations and the psychological impact on the mothers was chilling.

The attitudes and dialog were a bit old fashioned for today but that's only a reflection of the time it was written in.

It was very well done and I found it quite disturbing.

A list of all her works can be found HERE.

Her Wikipedia page is HERE.

Her dedicated website is HERE.

Judith Merril

Astounding Science Fiction - June 1948

First Contact by Murray Leinster - A short story review

I enjoyed this story very much.  While on survey of the Crab Nebula the crew of the LLANVABON encounter another craft in the region.

You'd think First Contact would be a good and exciting thing. Trouble is, how can you be sure the species you've just encountered won't just follow you back home and wage war?

The author came up with a compelling resolution to the problem. It's an interesting premise since much of these kinds of encounters on Star Trek do not have this level of paranoia to complicate things.

This story was first published in 1945, considering the Cold War started at the same time I can see how the author could push the attitudes into space.

I think the story stands the test of time. The technology could use some freshening up but the plot would make a fine 90 minute movie. 

Find out more about the author HERE and HERE.

Murray Leinster - circa 1930's

Astounding Science Fiction - May 1945

Arena by Fredric Brown - The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Voume I

Humanity is on the cusp of inter-stellar war - mutual destruction in very likely.

Two representatives, one human one alien, are transported out of space and time to an arena by a god-like entity who is never seen and heard only once. 

They are instructed to fight to the death because the universe can only accommodate one of these races, there can be no middle ground.  Who ever wins the fight will ensure that his race will survive while the other will be wiped from existence.

I kept thinking, "I've read this before." and I may have; this story is a classic.  Then it struck me that it sounded very similar to an episode of the original Star Trek, where Kirk has to fight a giant lizard guy.

Not only did it sound familiar but Fredric Brown was credited for the episode.  You can read a quick story on how this came about at Memory Alpha: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Fredric_Brown

After a bit of Wikipedia research I found that Brown had a very interesting writing career and I may have to dig out some more of his fiction, both SF and mystery.

The story was first published in 1944 and is quite a bit different in the details than the Star Trek episode.  In the story the alien is a red ball with tentacles and the two combatants are separated by a force field.  For those who complain that TV shows and movies are often nothing like the source material; think about the photo above.  In the 60's how would they have been able create the alien from the story?  The visual arts has its own limitations so sometimes they have to make adjustments but the basic story remains.  If I remember correctly the ending of the Star Trek episode is quite different from the short story.

In any case I am a fan of Fredric Brown.

Fredric Brown

Astounding Science Fiction - June 1944