I read 3 of the 14 short stories:

1. You Triflin' Skunk!
2. The Will
3. Dark Benediction

Dark Benediction was the only one I liked. I'm generally not a fan of short stories.

https://speculiction.blogspot.com/2023/10/review-of-dark-benediction-by-walter.h... ( )

A truly great collection of short stories from the author of A Canticle for Leibowitz. There was maybe one story i didn`t like and found a bit boring. ( )

It was hard to like this book, overall. A couple of stories were good, but most of the stories were mediocre, imo, and guilty of what so much sci-fi (and really most literature) of the era is guilty of: sexism. Barf.

4 stars
Crucifixus Etiam
(He was crucified also for us)
Mars was being transformed for future settlement by Earthlings.
"He had been on Mars only a month, and it hurt. Each time he swung the heavy pick into the red - Brown sod, his face winced with pain. The plastic aerator valves, surgically stitched in his chest, pulled and twisted and seem to tear with each lurch of his body. The mechanical oxygenator served as a lung, sucking blood through an artificially grafted network of veins and plastic tubing, frothing it with air from a chemical generator, and returning it to his circulatory system. Breathing was unnecessary, except to provide wind for talking, but Manue breathed in desperate gulps of the 4.0 psi Martian air; for he had seen the wasted, atrophied chests of the men who had served four or five years, and he knew that on return to earth - if ever - they would still need the auxiliary oxygenator equipment."

4 stars
I Dreamer
You know how they take baby cows away from mama cows so Humans can drink their milk? In this story, human babies are taken away from their mamas to become weaponized spaceships.

5 stars
Conditionally Human
"Anthropos' mutant pets fulfilled a basic biological need of man--of all life, for that matter. The need to have young, or a reasonable facsimile, and care for them. Neutroids kept humanity satisfied with the restricted birth rate, and if it were not satisfied, it would breed itself into famine, epidemic, and possible Extinction. With the population Held constant at 5 billion, the federation could ensure a decent living standard for everyone. And as long as birth must be restricted, why not restrict it logically and limit it to genetic desirables?

The world was a better place wasn't it? Great strides since the last century. Science has made life easier to live and harder to lose. The populace thoughtlessly responded by pouring forth a flood of babies and doddering old codgers to Clutter the Earth and make things tougher again by eating and not producing; but again science increase the individual's chances to survive and augmented his motives for doing so--and again the populace responded with the fecundity and long white beards, making more trouble for science again. so it has continued until it became obvious that progress wasn't headed toward "the good life" but toward more life to continue the same old mesger life as always. What could be done? Impede science? Unthinkable! Chuck the old codgers into the sea? Advanced the retirement age to 90 and work them to death? The old codgers still has a suffrage, and plenty of time to go to the polls." P. 235-6

Miller's solution is Anthropos' mutants.

4 stars
Dark Benediction

"Was man, as Seevers implied, a terrorized ape- tribe fleeing it logically from the Grey hands that only wanted to offer a blessing? How narrow was the line dividing blessing from Curse, god from demon! The parasites came in a devil's mask, the mask of disease. 'Diseases have often killed me,' said man. 'All disease is therefore evil.' But was that necessarily true? Fire had often killed man's club - bearing ancestors, but later came to serve him. Even diseases have been used to good advantage - artificially induced typhoid and malaria to fight venereal infections.
But the gray skin... Taste buds in the fingertips... Alien micro - organisms tampering with the nerves in the brain. Such concepts caused his scalp to Bristle. Man--made over to suit the tastes of a bunch of supposedly beneficent parasite - was he still man, or something else? Little bacteriological Farmers embedded in the skin, raising a crop of nerve cells - eat one, plant two, sow an olfactor in a new field, reshuffle the feeder - fibers to the brain." P.383


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