Weekly Short Stories: 1947 Science Fiction, Part 2

I continued my examination of some of the best in short science fiction from 1947, using the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 9 (1947).  The four stories I've reviewed below deal respectively with extraterrestrial contact, a secret invention, sense of identity, and the atom bomb...themes that are common in science fiction short stories.  Here are those stories...

TINY AND THE MONSTER by Theodore Sturgeon
Most alien visitation stories don't begin in the sunny Caribbean, but this one does.  In the Virgin Islands a dog...Great Dane by breed...disappears from its owner Alec for a few hours and then returns subtly changed, if you can call being able to read subtle.  Events seem to mysteriously conspire leading Tiny to be sent to Miss Alistair Forsythe, a metallurgical scientist by profession who lives a little upstate from New York City off the Hudson.  Tiny seems to be the manipulator of events, and what does he have in mind for Alistair...no, I am not going to spoil the story.  Tiny and the Monster, like just about all Theodore Sturgeon stories, are character-intensive and care as much about their relationships as they do the often quirky sci-fi themes that would arise in his fertile imagination...

E FOR EFFORT by T. L. Sherred
Ed, a frustrated small-time, shady entrepreneur stumbles across a small theater run by Miguel, or Mike as it is anglicized.  The movie he sees there is historical, about the encounter between Cortez and Montezuma, with remarkable detail in spite of the low-budget film it is using.  It comes out early on in the story that Mike has invented a machine through which one can view anything that has ever happened anywhere.  So what do Ed and Mike stupidly do with it? They make and distribute blockbuster historical movies, which work out fine for them...especially with the gobs of money they earn...until they make films about the U.S. Civil War and the two World Wars (and their causes).  This is an example of something I've harped upon before: if you have an ability or special access to something that gives you a unique advantage over the rest of the world, then the last thing you should want to do is go about publicizing it...especially when by doing so you are telling people that they can hold no secrets from you.  I gave up on Ed and Mike's foolishness early in the story, but it's a worthwhile examination about the limitations of our so-called "free" society...

LETTER TO ELLEN by Chan Davis
A young biological engineer/scientist is working on a special project with his friend and colleague to create special forms of life while their supervisor keeps the specifics of their ultimate goal secret from them.  One day the colleague sneaks around and discovers the answer, turning their project upside-down and causing a lot of introspection about their own identities.  This relatively brief story is presented in the form of a letter the young man is writing to Ellen, his love interest...

THE FIGURE by Edward Grendon
Only five pages long, The Figure fits with that type of short story that builds up to the climactic and paradigm-shifting final knockout sentence.  Three scientists are teamed up to invent a special form of time machine that can extract something from the future and bring it back.  Suddenly it's revealed by the narrator, one of the three, that the other two decided to "go fishing" and probably won't come back.  Why did they leave?  One clue: the narrator touches upon the sudden population explosion of roaches and other bugs following nuclear detonations, especially with the ones in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I don't know whether this really happened or not, but the author certainly made it seem real...

More about short science fiction from 1947 next week...