Allegory is the common thread of these four 1962 science fiction stories from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 24 (1962). But that's commonly the case with this genre, which offers a politically safer forum to discuss pressing and sensitive social issues that would invite blowback and retaliation were the author's ideas expressed more directly and literally. Here are my reactions to them...
HANG HEAD, VANDAL! by Mark Clifton
A procedure has been developed to derived unlimited energy through fission with ordinary elements...but since there's no way of stopping the process once started then Earth is off-limits to apply the process. But with Mars...since it's presumed to already be a dead, uninhabited world far away from us...who would miss its demise in the name of progress? The key word here is presumed. An allegorical story, written years before Earth Day and the advent of the environmental movement, about the unintended consequences of our sometimes blind march ahead with technology and "progress"...
THE WEATHER MAN by Theodore Thomas
The most intriguing story of the four to me, this tale creates the future scenario of Earth's weather being micromanaged...by specially constructed spaceships that navigate the sun's surface and selectively direct its energy toward Earth to provide the wanted effects. Because of this ability, worldwide political power has been concentrated in the weather control bureaucracy with three divisions that mimic our own present society's institutions: the political Weather Congress, the scientific Weather Advisors, and the implementing Weather Bureau. An ambitious politician high up in the Congress comes up with what seems an impossible project, and the Advisors and Bureau are challenged to see it through...
EARTHLINGS GO HOME! by Mack Reynolds
An ostensibly tongue-in-cheek story from the viewpoint of a future jaded Earthling who, bored with what his home planet can provide in the area of stimulation and interest, travels to Mars to live it up. The then-notion of the "ugly American" going abroad with an attitude of entitlement is treated allegorically here, with the native Martians having to adapt to the Earth people's presence...but not liking it one bit...
THE STREETS OF ASHKELON by Harry Harrison
An atheist trader on a world heretofore untainted by humanity has befriended the native intelligent amphibian life and is gradually imparting a sense of the universe to them when a Christian missionary is forced upon him and his world, creating a direct conflict as to the direction of those native beings. As with time travel stories, I am weary (and wary) of science fiction tales that stereotype Christians the way this one does...I think the author, clearly on the side of the atheist and presenting the religious debate in overly simplistic terms, could have easily used greater subtlety to get his point across and his story probably would have had a stronger effect on the reader. My least favorite of today's four...
Next week I conclude my look back at science fiction short stories from 1962...
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