This past week I went through three more selected science fiction stories from 1950 as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 12 (1950). This has been one of my favorite books in this 25-part series, and two of the tales I'm discussing here are not only among my all-time favorite short stories, but their authors were brilliant writers with their own provocative views of what the future will look like. So without further ado, let's take a look at these stories...
SCANNERS LIVE IN VAIN by Cordwainer Smith
Cordwainer Smith wrote a series of stories in the 1950s about space exploration and settling...his vision of deep space involved something called "the great pain" that causes space travelers to desperately seek death as well as the existence of vast rat-like psychic predators...the latter will come up in a later tale of his. It has been discovered that humans cannot traverse deep space without being subject to that "great pain"...until one man discovers the solution: have all the ship's passengers unconscious while those running the ship...namely the "scanners"...are modified with their brains detached from the rest of their bodies, which are computer-driven. The protagonist is one such scanner and Smith describes in detail what he and his comrades have to go through...amazing. They discover, however, that another man has devised a way to bypass the need for scanners, enabling ordinary humans to pilot the ships through deep space. Sensing their own demise, the scanners react in a very human way...and the story goes on to its conclusion. Although the setting and circumstances in this tale are pretty exotic, the idea of highly trained, specialized workers being rendered obsolete by newly adopted innovations is a common problem in our own time...
BORN OF MAN AND WOMAN by Richard Matheson
A very short story, it packs a big punch and asks the question: what makes a person a monster? Told from the viewpoint of a "monster" child imprisoned, abused, and shunned by his own parents, Matheson asks through his experiences whether mutation and deformity make the monster or whether cruel, inhuman treatment qualifies for the derogatory title...the verdict is in and it's the second choice...
THE LITTLE BLACK BAG by Cyril Kornbluth
Probably the most cynical science fiction writer in the history of the genre (as well as one of the most talented), Kornbluth saw a future when the general population's intelligence level has drastically dumbed down as their technology leaped ahead...I can't say that he was that much off-the-mark since much of what I see on social media (especially on Twitter)...which in itself is an incredible advance in mass communications networking technology...is senseless drivel. In this story, a tiny group of super-intelligent humans way off in the future quietly and secretly manage the masses of "dummy" humans on Earth, including providing their physicians with medical bags loaded with automatic devices that can cure almost any illness or repair almost any injury. One of these bags accidently gets transported back in time to the present (~1950, that is) and a disgraced doctor sees its medical miracles as a way to redeem himself. Unfortunately, someone else with less-than-idealistic motives has witnessed its wonders as well...
I'm on vacation from work right now, and I'm soon going to be taking a short break as well from this blog. I'll probably continue with my look at short science fiction from 1950 in a couple of weeks...
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