With my look back at the year 1956 in short science fiction, we're now entering the "Bill Irwin Era of Being Alive" with that being my birthyear. I'm using the anthology series Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories, this particular volume being #18 (it began with the year 1939)...I do this each Wednesday on the blog as I gradually forge ahead in time. Here are my reactions to the book's first three stories...
BRIGHTSIDE CROSSING by Alan E. Nourse
When I was a kid one of the first science fiction novels I read was Alan Nourse's Rocket to Limbo...still one of my all-time favorites. Brightside Crossing refers to the planet Mercury's side facing the sun...back then when astronomers had thought that the planet did not rotate as we do now know. Some adventurers on Mercury plan to cross that bright side...an near-impossible feat of danger and foolhardiness...where the heat is so intense that metals melt to liquid on the surface and constant seismic activity has made much of the landscape impassable. Although the science is dated (Venus was still considered accessible in 1956), this story gives a good introduction to the monumentally inhospitable conditions on other worlds...
CLERICAL ERROR by Mark Clifton
Electric shock therapy and lobotomies are a regrettable legacy of the field of psychiatry in the past century...this story takes abusive "remedies" to mental illness into the future and into a society run by bureaucrats and in which people's sanity can be brought into open question, resulting in their legal abduction and "treatment". One psychiatrist sees the abuse in his profession and tries to rescue a scientist patient who cannot reconcile his chosen field's philosophy with the extreme security atmosphere he must work under. This story brought back memories to me of the movies One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and A Beautiful Mind...
SILENT BROTHER by Algis Budrys
Harvey Cable, an astronaut crippled from an earlier rocket crash, rejoices from his home nearby the landing point of his three returning buddies from humanity's first-ever visit to a different world. But upon returning, the three space pioneers are suddenly cloaked in secrecy as biologists converge on their quarantine. Meanwhile, Cable discovers that during his sleep, someone...maybe himself...is making some sort of electronic device down in his cellar using parts from his television and other devices. The returning spacemen's situation, Cable's own mystery, and the story's title come together at the end. The final message, which I think was meant to be positive and optimistic, was unsettling to me and involved monumental change within ourselves...and without our consent...
Next week: more reviews of sci-fi short stories from 1956...
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