I continued reading through the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 11 (1949) as I explored some of the best in short science fiction from that year. Today I'll be looking at five more tales, which I remember first reading about fourteen years ago. Here are my reactions...
ETERNITY LOST by Clifford Simak
It's a bit off in the future and society is developing life-prolongation treatments...only problem is that they need to find and develop more "real estate" on other worlds on which to settle a future population that will never die...in the meantime only a select few are permitted the treatment. A senator whose life has been extended is one of these privileged few...and it looks as if his party will not support him for reelection, meaning that he will soon have to live out the remainder of his natural life and die. The discussion here in this story centers around who gets special treatment and benefit from groundbreaking discoveries while the rest either have to wait or suffer knowing that they will be excluded. I'm looking at what's going on in this country with its inequitable health care system and see some glaring parallels...
THE ONLY THING WE LEARN by Cyril Kornbluth
The title is based on the notion that history's lessons are almost always ignored and the mistakes are doomed to be repeated. Earth sends out settlers into outer space, who then return with a vengeance to attack their home planet. But the aggressors seem to have forgotten the lessons from their own example...
PRIVATE--KEEP OUT by Philip MacDonald
My all-time favorite Twilight Zone episode, And When the Sky Was Opened, is said to be based on a 1953 Richard Matheson short story titled Disappearing Act. Yet Philip MacDonald predated that tale by four years with almost the exact same premise...except that those retroactively disappearing weren't astronauts returning from an enigmatic space flight but rather people dreaming of nearly hitting upon the solution to all the universe's mysteries. This was my favorite of the five stories here and looks into that hazy world of dreaming-transitioning-into-wakefulness that I myself find so intriguing...
THE HURKLE IS A HAPPY BEAST by Theodore Sturgeon
On another world a "hurkle", a cuddly kitten-like animal used there as pets, accidentally gets transferred across space and dimension to our world and time. It's cute enough as its presence on the windowsill disrupts a small classroom of kids...only two problems: it unconsciously sends out vibration waves that cause horrible itching and...it's about to reproduce. A short, short story that in my estimation didn't rise to the level of the others...
KALEIDOSCOPE by Ray Bradbury
My second favorite story of this group after Private--Keep Out, Kaleidoscope exhibits the extraordinary writing talent of Ray Bradbury as he chronicles the dwindling radio conversations between a crew of astronauts...all spinning off in different directions in their insulated spacesuits after something in their ship exploded and sent each of them hurtling helplessly into empty space. Each knows he has only a brief time to live until the air runs out or he burns up over Earth or the Sun, and as such the words exchanged among them are of a desperate, very emotional nature. It's hard to read a story where you know up front that all of the characters are doomed...yet I highly recommend it because of those intense exchanges...
Next week I'll conclude with my look at science fiction short stories from 1949...
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