Today I conclude my look back at the year 1962 in the realm of short science fiction as revealed in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 24 (1962). I liked all four of today's stories and there's no doubt that each carries with it a message for our own time although they all came out 58 years ago...
WHEN YOU CARE, WHEN YOU LOVE by Theodore Sturgeon
This is one of those stories that sound very romantic...that is, until the end when not only do you realize the extent to which the extremely wealthy can exert their power but also that your very perception of your own life as being one largely unfettered by the direct manipulation of others comes into question. This is a story of a young man who, engaging in trespassing for fun, encounters such a powerful person...a young woman...and falls in love with her, arriving at an "ending' bearing a curious resemblance to the Matrix series of sci-fi movies...
THE BALLAD OF LOST C'MELL by Cordwainer Smith
I've already said that Cordwainer Smith was perhaps the most creative and innovative science fiction writer of his age...and I think he must have loved cats as well, since this story, along with my favorite The Game of Rat and Dragon, feature them. But in this tale it is eons into the future and Earth, now just an interstellar stopping point, has genetically altered the remaining animal forms to resemble humans...as an underclass they take up the menial jobs "pure" humans deem themselves too good for. C'mell, genetically a cat but by all appearances a woman, teams up with a benevolent human leader to help the animal underclass achieve civil rights and social equality. I hardly need to mention that this story is highly allegorical to our times...and the era in which it was written...
GADGET VS. TREND Christopher Anvil
This brief tale is a sequence of news posts stretched over a period of a few weeks after a new device has been invented that defends privacy and intrusion by setting up a force-field block. It's bracketed by two pronouncements by a sociologist of that time (way off in the future during the late 1970s), the first passionately in defense of individualism in the face of pressures to conform while the last lambasts selfish individualism and promotes unity and cooperation. Gee, what happened in between to change his stance? Guess you'll need to read it to find out...
ROOFS OF SILVER Gordon Dickson
A planet off somewhere in the cosmos is seeded with settlers...with observers secretly dispatched to evaluate their progress toward civilization. If they're suspected of regressing to animal-like behavior then they are frozen into quarantine and possibly destroyed...one observer, confronted with the information that his planet will face such a fate, objects and takes matters into his own hands. Toward the story's end he makes a very profound statement while trying in vain to defend his "people" that I think applies to today: "But these people operate according to justice and conscience. It's not just taboo and ritual, not just--". Who are the people today who operate according to justice and conscience and who are those who operate according to taboo and ritual?
Next week I began my look at the year 1963 in short science fiction...
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