I concluded my look back at science fiction short stories from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 6 (1944) with the final three tales from that book. All were by established authors of that era, but none of them appealed to me all that much...and for different reasons...
WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS by Lewis Padgett
Lewis Padgett, the pseudonym for the married writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. (Catherine) Moore, was responsible for a great story in 1943: Mimsy Were the Borogroves. It discussed the idea of randomness and how from another's perspective what seemed random actually followed a sensible pattern...very intriguing. When the Bough Breaks has a simpler premise: a baby, born with a mutated gene that gives him superhuman mental powers and greatly lengthens his longevity, at a distant point in the future sends agents back to his infancy...and to his astounded parents...to educate and train his infant self, using strange concepts and toys reminiscent of that Mimsy story. As the baby's genius and powers begin to manifest themselves, mother and father are beside themselves in frustration and fear, powerless to step in and evict the intruders from the future. The story's ending is what turned me against it: how could such a super-genius not see the danger in what he was trying to accomplish?
KILLDOZER! by Theodore Sturgeon
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, has been considered by some to be the greatest ever American novel. But when I read it, I discovered it had two different elements: the characters were very interesting and compelling, but the author's extremely intricate descriptions of whaling boats and their activities were yawners...sure, I'm now "good to go" if I ever want to become a 19th-century whaler. Killdozer! is like Moby Dick, except instead of boring the reader to death about whaleboats we're now treated to overbearing detail regarding the parts and functions of heavy construction equipment...including a bulldozer that has been possessed by an alien spirit bent on destroying humanity. One saving grace to this story is that, unlike so many sci-fi short stories of this era, it actually recognizes that World War II is going on at the time. A crew is sent to the Panama wilderness to build an airstrip, but...well, that bulldozer then turns into a "killdozer"...
NO WOMAN BORN by C.L. Moore
A beautiful, talented, and charismatic young woman has captured the world's adulation through the medium of television, but a tragic fire has spared only her brain. A man with the very improbable necessary know-how and talent has painstakingly placed it within a metallic body...upon revival she discovers her movements are superfluid due to the body's intricate structure of rings held together by the electromagnetism her brain produces, and she seeks to revive her entertainment career. Deirdre's relationship with Maltzer, her creator/reviver, is paramount to the story as he begins to seriously doubt his decision to bring her back to life...is she losing her humanity to the metal she is encased within? This is by far the best of the three stories, but I think it is too long due to excessive, introspective dialog at the end. No Woman Born would have been an excellent Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, or Night Gallery episode...
Next week I begin to look at notable short science fiction from 1945...
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