James BaenRecensioni

F/SF

F/SF

F/SF

F/SF

F/SF

F/SF

F/SF

ISFDB 9983.

An artifact of another time that suffers primarily from second rate stories that are utterly forgettable. It caught my eye because it had a story by Raccoona Sheldon in it. If you know who she is it might catch your eye also. The best story in here was by Bob Shaw. The novelette by Fritz Lieber was dated but entertaining and set in San Francisco.

The World Turned Upside Down, edited by David Drake, Eric Flint, Jim Baen

29 Stories, the likes of which I've not seen for over 50 years. These are stories that are so gripping that I do remember the majority of them…if not their authors or titles. Well, "gripping" may be too strong; let's say "memorable". Indeed, I have memories of rethinking the plots of many of these very stories in the past 50 years (and wondering who wrote them and what were they called). These are the types of stories that stick with you and tickle at the back of your mind with "what would I have done?" "is this possible?" "this story was so prescient."

There's one tale the plot line of which, if not the actual story, was possibly the inspiration for an episode of "Star Trek, the Next Generation" where the young hero is condemned to death despite his innocent ignorance of what seems to be an arbitrary law. How would you feel, knowing that you're about to die for doing something you thought was at worst a silly prank? Or, how would you feel being the executioner of someone who truly does not deserve to die?

There's only one story that is monster-scary, "Who Goes There?" and it was made into two movies: "The Thing From Another World," 1951; and the remake, "The Thing" in 1982. (I remember the 1951 movie, with James Arness—Matt Dillon, from "Gunsmoke"—as the monster…okay, I date myself.)

These vignettes, averaging about 24 pages…including prefaces and postscripts by the editors, describe situations that require meditative effort to comprehend. Not that they're complicated or intricate; but that they serve as examples of "thought experiments" conducted by philosophers or psychoanalysts. What would be right action under THESE conditions.

Forgive me, but these are the Sci-Fi tales I grew up on; these are the stories that fed my psychological needs. The short-stories of today just don't "touch" me in the same way. Or captivate me to the same extent. I recommend each story and the whole book of them to anyone who wants to either reawaken lost emotions—or to inspire the emotions of a prior age's childhood.

My recommendation is that you not read this book too quickly. Give each story it's due and let yourself digest it before you move on to the next.

Contains part 2 of Pohl's Gateway

The headline story in this 1974 issue of Galaxy is Verge Foray's "The Frontliners"; feisty female secret agents engage in interplanetary politics and secret agent stuff - but are ready to turn back to child-rearing for the good of the species at the drop of a hat. Definitely of its time. It was refreshing, then, to turn the page to Bob Shaw's short "A full member of the club". This was inspired by an observation of Bob's; he kept seeing adverts on the tv for After Eight mints, where posh people were passing around the After Eights at a dinner party. (If After Eights aren't familiar to you, think Ferraro Rocher. "With zeze chocolates you are truly spoiling us, Ambassador.")

Bob was incensed. "I can buy those sweeties in my corner shop!" he wrote. "Rich people wouldn't have those! They'd have fabulous chocolates hand-crafted by Fabergé!" And the likes of you and me wouldn't know where to buy them, either. Bob's writing style was way ahead of Foray's, too.

A couple of sound stories from Saberhagen and Utley follow, and finally some factual pieces; Jerry Pournelle on rocket science and the AAAS, and Isaac Asimov on the things the human race must do and the things we must stop doing in order to survive the next forty years. I'm sorry to report from forty years up the line that we're still doing the things we shouldn't do. By the bucketload. And to some extent, this Asimov article reads most unlike the man's usual projected persona. A bit sobering, that.

And the magazine is full of publicity and inserted squibs for the launch of the magazine "Worlds of If".

Finally, more BoSh; the second part of the serialisation of "Orbitsville".

That true rarity: an anthology where I didn't even mildly dislike any of the stories. Some old friends, some classics, and a couple that were new to me. Excellent!½

Extensive collection of early "SciFI", most were excellent then and many remain so.

* Stand Pat, Ruby Stone (Roger Zelany): a story of alien marriage. Interesting.
* Old Woman By The Road (Gregory Benford): not my favorite author (given he wrote the worst book in Asimov's Foundation universe, which is a bit of an achievement given some of the others. This story isn't terrible, it just doesn't go anywhere. There is a single small plot element, which has been repeated in many other books (for example The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, which predates this story by 12 years).
* New Beginnings (Jerry Pournelle): a non-fiction column about design choices baked into our existing infrastructure which make it hard for it to be efficient, the failure to save for baby boomer retirement, and our need to be concerned about growing oil use and failure to find alternative energy sources like solar. The scary bit? This article from 1978 reads like it could have been written yesterday.
* Transition team (Charles Sheffield): are we suited to life on a space station? A good short story.
* Antimony (Spider Robinson): a pretty good cryonics story. Its a pity 1990 didn't give me a personal flyer like he promised.
* Very Proper Charlies (Dean Ing): a novelette about terrorism, specifically how terrorists really need media coverage to progress their agendas. A little dated, but still a good read.
* Party Line (Clifford D. Simak): a longish story, this one didn't really do much for me until about half way in. It got better though. What would aliens want from us if they met us?
* Assimilating Our Culture, That's What They're Doing (Larry Niven): short, and good.
* Science Fiction and Science, Part One (Poul Anderson): a bit dull to be honest.

Overall, this was an ok anthology, although not the best I've read. It also wasn't themed, which I think is a weakness as an anthology. On the other hand, I would have been happy if I'd paid $1.95 USD for this as a magazine, especially given it only cost me $2 in the second hand store. The many, irrelevant, line drawings of naked women are a bit odd though. I guess that's the 70s for you.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/Anthology/Destinies_Vol1_1_No1.html

This anthology consists of science fiction (and a few fantasy) short stories, that the editors read when they were young, that they felt left a strong impression on them. They stories selected are chosen more for the authors that wrote them in many cases, than for the specific story itself. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. As the editors state in their comments on several of the stories, the best known stories by the authors in question have been in so many anthologies that they really don’t need to be added to yet another one.

Over all, I greatly enjoyed the selection of stories in this anthology. I had read a small number of them before, but I didn’t mind that, as it had been many years since I read any of them. In recent years, I have read almost exclusively novels by modern authors, with occasional novels from the likes of Asimov or Anderson. There was only one story in the entire collection that I didn’t enjoy, and in this case, I couldn’t even bring myself to finish it. “Spawn” by P. Shuyler Miller. It has some of the worst purple prose I’ve ever read, and it was sickening me within the first two pages of the story. I ended up skipping the majority of the story.

However, overlooking the one fly in the ointment, I must say this was a superb collection of stories, and one that has opened my eyes to some new authors to look at, in my reading later this year. I applaud Baen, Drake, and Flint for their excellent taste, and look forward to reading some of Drake’s writing later this year as well.

A 5/5, and a definite recommendation for any fan of scifi.

This could have been very self indulgent - a collection of the editors' favourite stories from the golden age of science fiction (from the time you were thirteen or so :-)) but by-and-large, they have come up with excellent stories and authors, some of which I had not heard of and some of which are definate classics.

Some stories show their age - inevitably given the fact they were written over half a century ago, but the great surprise is the way most manage to remain interesting despite their age.

Of these, the classic Arthur C Clarke 'Rescue Party' opens the anthology but in many ways Rick Raphael's 'Code Three' takes pride of place as an example of descriptive science fiction. It's basically the story of a highway patrol on the superhighways of an international freeway system that is basically impossible to imagine these days. The weirdest piece by far was P Schuyler's 'Spawn'. CL Moore's (Caroline Lucille) 'Shambleau' is one of the greatest stories ever written to be set on Mars, despite it being a Mars that is difficult to envision these days, but it's her first ever published story and has a great deal of back story that appears well developed if it was her first ever story.

F/SF

Contains part 3 of Pohl's Gateway

Contains part 1 of Pohl's Gateway

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Sample Chapters: http://webscriptions.net/chapters/0743498747/0743498747.htm