These three science fiction stories I'm discussing today from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 21 (1959) are all a bit disturbing...but each one, although a complete tale in itself, carries with it food for thought about life today. Read on to see what I mean...
THE ALLEY MAN by Philip José Farmer
This story tries to describe what it might be like in current times (1959, that is) if a Neanderthal were still alive on Earth. Farmer has him marginalized on the outskirts of society, a scavenger of back alleys and living on his wits and brawn. A sociologist woman befriends Old Man Paley, as he calls himself, to study him and his claim of being the last surviving pure-blood "Real Folker"...as opposed to everyone else, who are "False Folkers". There is a strong oral tradition to Paley's narrative and his own history of his people...but is he really Neanderthal? This open question pervades the story and provokes similar questions about how some of us tend to personally identify ourselves...
DAY AT THE BEACH by Carol Emshwiller
Myra and her husband Ben...along with their peculiar little boy Littleboy...take a Saturday (or is it another day) trip to the beach a few years following a nuclear holocaust that has destroyed the nation's social fabric and created a dog-eat-dog world of trying to survive on limited food and supplies. Their own bodies...along with hair loss...show the signs of exposure to radioactivity. But simply laying out a blanket on the beach and running up and down the sand and into the ocean carries its own risks that before the conflagration would have been unthinkable. Very, very scary: but I don't think you need a atomic war to accomplish the same social unraveling as I see what's starting to go down today around me...
THE MALTED MILK MONSTER by William Tenn
Back in 2017 I reviewed this tale, a favorite of mine...here's a link to my article then: [link]. Carter, a young big city ad executive, is courting Lee, a young teacher at a suburban school. At an ice parlor in town, the two of them observe Dorothy, one of the teacher's students who is very obese and socially isolated from her classmates. The girl is staring hard at Carter and after he leaves Lee off at her home he notices that she has followed them. Not long thereafter he feels a sudden rip going through his mind and finds himself in an imaginary land of trees with popsicles and a river of chocolate: Dorothy has taken him captive within her own mind! Now...how to escape? I wonder how many of us have allowed someone else to figuratively hold ourselves captive within their own minds, denying our own individuality and hanging on the other's every thought and whim...
Next week I continue my look at standout science fiction short stories from 1959...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment