Today I conclude my look at some of the more notable short science fiction from 1951 as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 13 (1951). Here are my reactions to the final five tales in the book...
THE QUEST FOR ST. AQUIN by Anthony Boucher
In a crumbling post-apocalyptic world the official Church is outlawed and in hiding from the intrusive Technarchy and its Loyalty Checkers. The Pope sends out Thomas, one of his priests, to search and find the body of St. Acquin, a reputed miracle worker whose discovery he hopes will start a major revival in the faith. He provides for Thomas a donkey to ride on...well, not exactly, for the ass is robotic and speaks...it's called a "robass". As Thomas and his robass ride on down the road toward their destination, they discuss many things, among them whether or not robots themselves are sentient beings and may need a savior as well. The story progresses to the end, and quite frankly I was rather bored by it all...I really don't think you need a science fiction setting to discuss theological matters, but that's just me: a lot of other people at the time of this story's publication praised it to "high heaven"...
TIGER BY THE TAIL by Alan E. Nourse
A woman at a department store is caught putting several aluminum items in her handbag, clearly far too many to actually fit in it. But when apprehended, her bag is empty...where did the aluminum go? Scientists studying the bag conclude that it contains an opening to another universe, and the aluminum is crucial to building that opening...the woman had apparently been mesmerized somehow to provide that aluminum. One scientist, working on his own, rashly decides to test whether he can drag out part of that other universe in order to close the opening, with alarming results: hence the story's title. I think this one would have made a good Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode...
WITH THESE HANDS by Cyril Kornbluth
This was one of Kornbluth's better stories and raises a very important and pertinent issue in our times, much more so than even in 1951: the obsolescence of skilled human endeavor in the face of technology that easily "improves" on it. A sculptor by trade in a future New York City finds that no one will commission him for his works, instead relying on a machine-generated innovation called Stereopantograph for their art. He is reduced to barely getting by through teaching art classes and sees the extinction of his craft in the near future. It's a sobering tale applicable to today's digital age as one profession after another falls victim to the advent of technology. Once in my youth I considered training to be a professional translator...what a joke that would be today with the instant translation software that anyone with a smartphone can carry around with them...
A PAIL OF AIR by Fritz Leiber
Leiber skillfully describes a nightmare scenario for Earth when a dark star invades the solar system and gravitationally spirits our planet away, freezing its atmosphere and condemning to death almost all of its life. Yet one family is left struggling to survive as the father, himself an engineer, has devised a way to at least forestall their eventual demise. To get the oxygen…which lies frozen on top of the frozen atmosphere, he sends out his son with a bucket to climb up, collect the solid oxygen, and bring it back where they warm it and breath...what a bizarre picture. The family's prospects certainly don't look "sunny", yet...
DUNE ROLLER by Julian May
A meteorite hundreds of years ago strikes a Michigan lake and breaks up...in the process breaking up into little stone-like pieces a totally alien life form. It's this entity's dangerous attempts at reunification that place a biologist studying marine invertebrates there directly in its way as he first tries to discover its true nature and then devises a plan to keep it from causing any more mayhem. In our age of respect for the diversity of life, this 1950s "us vs. the space monster" story doesn't quite fit...but it's a good story nevertheless, and I thoroughly enjoyed the last paragraph...
Next week I start my look back at the year 1952 in short science fiction...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment