I continue my look back at 1953 science fiction, reviewing more selections from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 15 (1953). Here are the next five from the book...
SAUCER OF LONELINESS by Theodore Sturgeon
On their 1979 Regatta de Blanc album, the Police have a very popular track titled Message in a Bottle...its culminating line resonates strongly with the message in this story of a woman, who while taking a walk through Central Park one day, gets hit in the head by a small flying saucer with its own message to convey. She discovers that loneliness and being alone are two entirely separate things as she is harassed and subjected to interrogations and universal notoriety and scrutiny as a result of her experience...
THE LIBERATION OF EARTH by William Tenn
I reviewed this story in an earlier article...click on the following link to read it: [Link]. This is a tale that has almost universal allegorical application: Earth is just minding its own business when one day a far-more technologically advanced alien race lands and informs "us" that they are embroiled in a serious galactic war with another race of beings...and that they are "liberating" Earth from its influence (which was never felt in the first place). The battles between the warring parties ensue with our dear home world further damaged and its population decimated with each succeeding encounter. To apply the allegory, think of all the situations on different levels when people just want to be left alone to mind their own business and some other more dominant party decides, according to its own values and self-interests, to interfere and ultimately subjugate and harm them while at the same time claiming that it is working to help or "liberate" them...
LOT by Ward Moore
Another story that has allegorical value, Los Angeles has just been struck in a nuclear exchange and the city is in a near-panicked state of mass evacuation. Mr. Jimmons has foreseen this development and has already meticulously planned his escape plans, including his destination, escape route and strategy, and what to take and what to leave behind...unlike his wife and three children, each with their own shortsightedness, petty concerns and unwillingness to see the changed reality in their situation for what it is. The narrative describes their journey along the highway and the revealing ongoing conversation in the car between them, as well as Jimmons' unspoken thoughts that explain and justify his actions. And the title Lot is in itself an analogy...from the Old Testament of the Bible...
THE NINE BILLION NAMES OF GOD by Arthur C. Clarke
According to this story, there is a sect of monks off across the Himalayas believing that when God's nine billion names are compiled, his task in the universe will be complete...whatever that's supposed to mean. The monks hire a western tech company to send them a computer, along with two technicians, to print out all reasonable combinations of letters that would eventually encompass those nine billion names. This is one of those typically brief short stories of Clarke that has a knockout, memorable final line. As for the computer, remember that this story was written in 1953!
WARM by Robert Sheckley
This story depends on the notion that what we perceive as humans is conceptualized by trying to form "wholes", or Gestalts, out of those perceptions. Sheckley, through his protagonist who is about to leave his apartment to pick up his date to a party, describes in progressive fashion what would happen if one abandoned his humanity and began to perceive reality on its own terms and not through our own evolved filters of conceptualizing. This is a pretty doggone deep story and kind of makes you wonder about it all...
Next week: more sci-fi short stories from 1953...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment