I continued my look back at the best science fiction short stories from 1946 with my second installment of reviews from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 8 (1946). Ray Bradbury, the famed author of works like Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, makes his appearance here as well as does Arthur C. Clarke of 2001: A Space Odyssey renown. Here are the next stories appearing in the book...
RESCUE PARTY by Arthur. C. Clarke
There is a star in our galaxy on the verge of becoming a nova, and the planets in its system will consequently be destroyed, any life on them obliterated. An interstellar rescue expedition is rushing ahead of the explosion to the third planet, where there are reports of intelligent life...I think you know where this is all going. Only one problem: once they get there, they find the planet deserted: where did everybody go? Guess you'll have to read it to find out...
PLACET IS A CRAZY PLACE by Fredric Brown
Humanity has branched out with its explorations to other stars, and Placet is a planet in one of these, which happens to be a double-star system causing its orbit to meander wildly as well as create a quite impossible phenomenom cause by the interaction between one star...composed of matter...and the other, composed of "contraterrene" or anti-matter. A man stationed there describes the many bizarre manifestations he experiences...this is a very funny little story, not something that necessarily makes any significant statement...
CONQUEROR'S ISLE by Nelson S. Bond
This is a special story in that the time setting is around 1945 instead of some far-off future point...a departure from the sci-fi norm. A bedraggled flight bomber is being interviewed by a naval medical officer following his rescue at sea. Lt. Brady claims that he and his crew were swept by a severe storm into a crash landing off the shore of a small unknown Pacific island...where they were met by people who seem to be operating on as much of a higher level than ordinary humans as we are above the ape man. There is a conspiracy on their part, claims Brady as he relates his tale of capture and eventual escape, to take over the world. But where is this island and what will the good doctor do after hearing this account? The ending is a little jolting...
THE MILLION YEAR PICNIC by Ray Bradbury
A family sometime off in the future ostensibly takes a pleasure rocket trip to Mars...they're going to walk around, explore, and have a nice picnic on the Red Planet, you see. But the parents of the three boys, as the story progresses, gradually unravel the real reasons for their excursion, reasons that become more somber until the tale's final remarks as the family finally encounters the Martians...
More from 1946 next week...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment