Here are my reactions to three more standout science fiction short stories from 1955 as they appeared in the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories #17 (1955). This was one of the few books in this 25-volume series I possessed early on, before I decided back in 2007 to get the entire series by purchasing different available used books off the Internet. So I've read these particular stories quite a few times...
THE VANISHING AMERICAN...by Charles Beaumont
I'm not exactly sure what being American specifically has to do with the message in this story per se other than the nationality of the middle-aged male protagonist, whose life has become so obscure and irrelevant to himself and others with his compliance and compromises that one day he discovers that he has literally become invisible. How does he once again become someone meriting others' attention? The story's ending reveals this...it's a different kind of science fiction tale and full of allegory about how people should live their lives...
THE GAME OF RAT AND DRAGON...by Cordwainer Smith
I reviewed this story on this blog a couple of years ago...here are links to both the story itself [story] and my earlier review [review]. It's always been one of my favorite sci-fi stories and Smith, whose real name was Paul Linebarger, developed an incredible future vision of human space exploration and settlement over the span of several stories using some very novel ideas. Cats figure into this tale as well as telepathy...and a vast, menacing and sentient presence in the deep cosmos. Read it to see why I like it so much...
THE STAR...by Arthur C. Clarke
The Star was one of Arthur C. Clarke's more famous stories. Returning from an exploratory space mission to the remnants of the supernova explosion that gave rise to the Phoenix nebula nearly two thousand years ago, the mission's captain and crew are depressed after their discovery on a surviving world that was distant enough from its sun to withstand the explosion. But the astrophysicist telling the story...who also happens to be a Jesuit...knows something they don't know, something that calls into question his very faith in God. What was the discovery and what did our narrator find out? It's a pretty short story and available on the Internet, although I'm not sure about its copyright status and thus didn't include a link...
Next week I conclude my look back at 1955 in the world of short science fiction...
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