I concluded my reading of the retrospective science fiction anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 1 (1939) with four tales. One deals with a future apocalypse, one with the nature of personal identity, one with the limitations of power, and the last an optimistic look ahead at space exploration and settlement...a pretty decent range of themes. By the way, this will be the first and last of the Asimov Presents books that feature Robert Heinlein stories: the next one, for 1940, was to include three more but were blocked from publication. Maybe someday I'll review them, too. Anyway, here are the final four short stories in the 1939 book...
RUST by Joseph E. Kelleam
X-120 is a robot, built for combat, one of only a few still functioning on an Earth of the future, now completely devoid of human life. His companions G-3a and L-1716 are in worse shape than X-120, the former slowly hobbling on one remaining leg and the latter with broken arms. Only humans, who had created them, could also maintain and repair them. Why did the humans die out? Well, I'll give you a clue: watch the Matrix or Terminator movie series for similar themes. This brief story is special in that it presents the world through the viewpoint of a machine...much like Eando Binder's I, Robot that opened this book. But whereas the robot in that story was benevolent toward humanity, well...
THE FOUR-SIDED TRIANGLE by William F. Temple
This is a story about a romance triangle between three inventor/scientists: erratic and ingenious Bill, the steady and dependable Will, and Joan, with whom Bill and Will are in love. Their current project is to exactly duplicate objects, but Bill wants to go a step further and duplicate life...his efforts are fruitless as all the "exact" duplicates of the rabbits he is working on turn out to be nonliving. In the meantime, Joan has married Will and Bill is beside himself with grief over losing her. But if he could make an exact copy of Joan after he solves his problem of keeping the duplicates alive...an interesting story premise. But I was disappointed in the ending...I think the author missed out on a great opportunity here...
STAR BRIGHT by Jack Williamson
A harassed husband and father meekly tries to give his unappreciative spouse and (well, his daughter seems to understand him) whatever they want, but can never get their respect. One night he wishes on a shooting star for miracles...and the tiny meteor hits him in the forehead and lodges in his brain. Then he discovers that he can create things by willing them into existence...his only impediment is his own imperfect knowledge of their composition. He foolishly lets his family in on his new powers and his problems cascade. The story's ending revealed a fair amount of insight on the part of the author about how codependent behavior can harm all of the concerned parties...take away the enabler and see what happens...
MISFIT by Robert Heinlein
Heinlein liked to write optimistic, upbuilding stories about space exploration...this is one of his earliest. A crew of young volunteers, misfits in their life on Earth, are recruited to land on a small asteroid, build a base on it, and move it to a strategic orbit between Earth and Mars. One of the young men is revealed to be a mathematical prodigy: his mental calculations eventually save the expedition from destruction. Misfit was written without taking into account the revolution in computers and digital technology that has become commonplace in today's world, making such an ability redundant if not obsolete. This genius who saved the day in Heinlein's fictional tale, without extensive training in programming and systems, would probably still be regarded as a devalued "misfit" in our real time...
Next week I'll start on the best short science fiction from 1940...
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