Today I begin discussing science fiction short stories from the year 1963, as published in the retroactive anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 25 (1963). This book is the final volume in a project that editors Asimov...who passed away just before it was published in 1992...and Martin Greenberg deemed the "Golden Age of Science Fiction": 1939-63. But the stories won't end after this book: I also have "year's best" anthologies, edited by Donald Wollheim, that cover the years 1964-89. 1963 for me spans the second half of my first grade at West Hollywood's Boulevard Heights Elementary School, the first half there of my second grade, and a nice, long summer vacation sandwiched in between. One Friday afternoon after coming back to our classroom from lunch in late November a kid from the class across the hall came in to tell our teacher something...we soon found out that President Kennedy had been shot...
FORTRESS SHIP by Fred Saberhagen
A series of warships in deep space are presenting a problem for human space travelers...from a civilization far away and long gone, these monstrosities are unmanned and automatic, destroying whole fleets and even planets they happen to encounter along their way. Three little Earth ships must coordinate and attack one before it destroys a nearby world...I think one of the old Star Trek episodes was based on this story...
NOT IN THE LITERATURE by Christopher Anvil
I used to watch an old late 70's public television series called Connections that revealed the development of technology over the ages and how different smaller discoveries and inventions were crucial to later innovations. This story presents a scenario in which a society is advancing toward rocketry...but it's missing a particular element of "discovery" in its own scientific/technological history that is causing one failed launch after another. Somebody comes up, however, with the answer (obvious to us)...but he is laughed off by the so-called "experts"...makes me wonder whether we're missing something fundamental in our own approach to things...
THE TOTALLY RICH by John Brunner
Very similar in format to the 1962 Theodore Sturgeon short story When You Care, When You Love that I reviewed just last week, one of the world's very few super-rich, a middle-aged woman, finds a scientist/engineer who has discovered and developed a procedure that could bring back a deceased person...or at least a duplicate, given enough information about his or her immediate environment. It's another trip of speculation as to how the most wealthy on Earth may be essentially invisible to the rest of us and how they choose to live their lives...
NO TRUCE WITH KINGS by Poul Anderson
Some three hundred years after a planetary nuclear war (the "Hellbomb"), Earth is divided into smaller, warring political units...the focus in this story is the former American Pacific west as two sides vie for control. But there is another element here: an alien group has infiltrated Earth and is taking sides in the conflict, hoping to steer humanity's course toward a more civilized, less violent society that will enable it to be admitted to the interstellar community as a participating member. Whew, talk about violating Star Trek's Prime Directive!
Next week: more on science fiction short stories from 1963...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment