I continued my look back at the year 1946 in the world of short science fiction with reactions to four more works from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 8 (1946). Two of them were lengthy, more appropriately deemed as novellas, and one very short. Here they are...
LORELEI OF THE RED MIST by Ray Bradbury and Leigh Brackett
Here once again is a story based on the notion popularly held years ago that Venus was a swampy, oceanic planet with all sorts of exotic life there. In this story different native humanoid races are at war with each other...good for fugitive hard-luck criminal Hugh Starke as his escape ship crash-lands there, his consciousness transferred from his dying body to a strong, robust human one, formerly belonging to a warrior named Conan before he lost his mind. Bad, because the Venusian woman telepathically performing this miracle wants to use the resurrected Conan/Starke to assassinate her opponents. This is a tale full of intrigue and changing values...the protagonist, once a low-level, career lawbreaker, comes to change his perspective on life as he gets further involved in the Venusian conflict...
THE LAST OBJECTIVE by Paul A. Carter
This story presents a nightmare future scenario for Earth as nuclear wars have rendered the surface uninhabitable, while warfare still continues down beneath as giant drilling warships battle each other...although what they have remaining to fight for, I don't know. But the urge for destruction continues and religion has been thoroughly banned, replaced by a staff psychologist who pesters and harasses the crew. A decisive confrontation with an enemy ship looms ahead through the miles of rock...but exactly how decisive the combatants don't know until it's too late...
MEIHEM IN CE KLASRUM by Dolton Edwards
Back in the fifth/sixth grade in my elementary school (~1967) someone came up with the goofball idea of helping kids learn to read better by teaching them to read writing that had been changed to a more phonetic form...which of course only works while they are reading that phonetic writing. This very short story describes an English language reform effort, made gradually over years with orthographic changes every few years...each change shown in the story's text itself. Can you guess the title's true name?
VINTAGE SEASON by Lawrence O'Donnell
Lawrence O'Donnell was one of the several pen names used by the married writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. (Catherine) Moore. In Vintage Season Oliver Wilson's home town seems to suddenly be visited by strange people who speak English without contractions, along with other noticeable variations. They comport themselves differently and seem a little out of place there, exuding an air of confidence if not arrogance. Oliver has leased his house to three of them, a man and two women. Originally intending to leave the house for them, he decides to remain out of curiosity. The visitors behave as tourists sometimes behave when they visit places that they feel culturally superior to, and I'm guessing this may be an underlying reason for this story's existence in the first place. I wonder how many times Americans or Europeans travel to Third World countries and pity the less economically advantaged people there...well, I doubt that they appreciate that pity and regard it as condescending. As for Vintage Season, I don't think I'm giving away the story when I say it's about time travel...and quite frankly, I think it's one of the best stories of that type out there...
That's it for this week...next week I'll conclude my examination of some of 1946's best science fiction short stories...
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