I conclude my look back at the year 1956 in science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 18 (1956). I've enjoyed reading through all the great old tales, most of which I've read before. Still, I think a break is in order and starting next week on this weekly blog feature I'll start reviewing the short stories of the late renowned sci-fi author Robert Heinlein, whose stories were blocked from appearing in Asimov's series...you can't really take a comprehensive look at old science fiction without recognizing the works of Heinlein. After I'm through with him, I'll resume my year-by-year retrospective, picking back up at the year 1957. Anyway, here are my reactions to the final five stories from 1956...
THE DOORSTOP by Reginald Bretnor
On the outskirts of Detroit lives a physician with his wife, who has just purchased second-hand what she deems to be a doorstop, a small dumbbell-shaped object with cloudy ends and points visible within. The doctor notices movement within the object's interior, and one night it shoots a beam of light into the sky. He traces its past history to the ground beside a remote stretch of railroad track...a little boy had discovered it there a few days earlier and began the chain of sales that ended in his own house. And now a team of government scientists are analyzing the object, which they believe to be extraterrestrial in origin. This is a story of introspection as the physician delves into the ramifications of first contact: what kind of aliens are these, how advanced are they, and do they have benign or nefarious designs on humanity and Earth? A lot of ground to cover in a pretty brief story...
THE LAST QUESTION by Isaac Asimov
Back in this time it was popular for writers to speculate on the development of computer technology and how all-encompassing and all-knowing it would become, with mankind becoming increasingly dependent on it. Asimov jumps from the present (i.e. 1956) to hundreds, thousands, millions...and even billions of years into the future as humans...who are evolving and intertwining their existence inextricably with the eventually cosmos-spanning machine intelligence...continue to pose it one basic question: can entropy be reversed? And the answer always comes back to them: insufficient data...that is, until the story's ending, which I should have seen coming...
STRANGER STATION by Damon Knight
This, another "first contact" story, examines the inevitable course that must prevail when two alien cultures first encounter each other: one will eventually come out as the more powerful and will then overwhelm the other in either a constructive, loving manner or with hateful oppression and/or destruction. Humanity has encountered an alien race and the two meet in space within a specially-constructed space station that accommodates one man and one (humungous and extremely gross) alien. The experience is repulsive and traumatic to all who have preceded Sergeant Wesson and it is now his turn to try and withstand the experience while retaining his sanity...
2066: ELECTION DAY by Michael Shaara
This story is predicated on the notion that as our world becomes ever-so increasingly complex, then the task of serving as President of the United States will eventually become nearly impossible to do. So instead Americans, in the period preceding "election" day, submit to tests, their answers processed by complex computers which analyze the results and then proclaim the next president...who more likely than not will greatly suffer physically and mentally over the course of his tenure. I read this tale and think that if just one person had to make all the decisions, then this would be true...but any effective leadership involves skillful delegation of authority to others within the administration to practice their own abilities and decision-making. Even with presidents in the past (or present) you may not like, you have to recognize this is true...the presidents who have seemed the most overcome by their jobs tend to be the ones having problems delegating authority...
AND NOW THE NEWS... by Theodore Sturgeon
I thought this was a very clever little tale by a writer who may have been the best in his craft at probing the inner workings of our minds and motives. A happy, prosperous man with a family and house suddenly begins to take a frantic interest in following the news, reading daily newspapers thoroughly and attentively listening to hourly radio news broadcasts and watching TV news shows. His exasperated wife comes up with a strategy to combat his "addiction", removing the tubes from his radios and TV set and damaging them (remember we're dealing with the state of tech in 1956). His subsequent reaction sets in motion a series of events leading to a psychiatrist seeking him out for "treatment" and a return to normal social behavior. The story's ultimate lesson, which is more than ever applicable to today in 2020, is very sobering and the ending isn't anything I'd want to wish on anyone...
Next week I start looking back at some of Robert Heinlein's sci-fi short stories...
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