This week marks Part One in my look back at some of the standout short science fiction from the year 1946, as compiled in the book Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 8 (1946). World War II had ended the previous year with the explosion of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki...much of the ensuing stories in this genre pertain to problems the Bomb would generate in the years to come. Of the first four stories, three directly relate to this topic while the other...the opening story...eerily portends the digital reality we're living through right now...
A LOGIC NAMED JOE by Will F. Jenkins (Murray Leinster)
Personal computers...in this story attributed to the groundbreaking Carson Circuit instead of digital microtechnology...have permeated the culture of the near future (from the perspective of 1946). In the comfort of your own living room you can get the news and weather, watch movies, listen to music, do business, communicate with others...who would have thought this possible? The flip side of this is twofold: the ensuing destruction of personal privacy and the use of this system to criminal and/or destructive ends...exactly the situation we see with the Internet today. And on top of it all, a freak computer (Jenkins calls computers "logics") trains itself as an "Alexa", inviting users to ask any question they want, no matter how scientifically impossible, intrusive, or criminal...and then relies on all the other logics in the worldwide system to come up with solutions. Yes, this is another one of those bizarre, prescient stories that make you wonder whether the author wasn't a time traveler...
MEMORIAL by Theodore Sturgeon
A nuclear scientist/engineer turned pacifist hits upon an idea to turn the bellicosity of Earth's population in this nuclear age into one of emphasizing world peace over everything else. How will he accomplish this? By exploding his own atomic device...in the remote desert...creating a deep pit of reactivity that will remind humanity of the horrors of this type of warfare for thousands of years. Will he get to do this and if so, will it work? After all, there is another way people could respond to his planned act...
LOOPHOLE by Arthur C. Clarke
Civilized, intelligent Martians have been observing humanity's progress on Earth and are dismayed when they see them using atomic bombs in warfare. So they build a fleet of fighting ships and send them to encircle our planet, warning us that each launch of a rocket into space will result in the destruction of one of our cities. But the Martians know that it will only be a matter of time before humans try to get around their edict, so they plot for the complete destruction of human life on Earth. This story...with a wild ending...is the first one contributed by Arthur C. Clarke of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame and is accompanied by two others in this anthology, to be reviewed at a future date...
THE NIGHTMARE by Chan Davis
Another creepily prophetic story, The Nightmare delves into the subject of nuclear terrorism as, somewhere in the Bronx of densely populated New York City, Geiger counters are picking up telltale readings of a nuclear bomb. Will the investigators get to it in time...and what does it all have to do with the idea that dispersing the population instead of concentrating them in centers like New York would serve as a deterrent to nuclear attack? This notion was also propounded by Clifford Simak in his story City...
Next week: more of my reactions from the 1946 sci-fi anthology...
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