Here are my reactions to three more science fiction short stories from the anthology Robert Silverberg Presents The Great SF Stories (1964). For some reason I found the writing style in each of them a little cumbersome to read...maybe it's because I've recently been reading some of Kurt Vonnegut's works and he deliberately writes in a plain, clear manner. Still, I plowed through the below stories of Smith, Zelazny and Brackett and have nothing but high respect for each of these wonderful writers...
THE CRIME AND THE GLORY OF COMMANDER SUZDAL by Cordwainer Smith
Commander Suzdal is alone on his spaceship exploring the deep regions of the galaxy when he encounters a distress signal from an unknown group, the Arachosians. He learns of their history just as they are about to take over the ship. This group of humans who left Earth many generations before had encountered disaster on their chosen world and had changed, and now see themselves as humanity's enemy: how can he stop them? The remarkable ending, the Arachosians' story, and Suzdal's ultimate fate are mysteries for the reader to discover. It's a little hard for me to describe my objection to this story directly because I'd be spoiling the story for you if I did...let's just say that the author overdid it a bit with his aversion to exactly how the Arachosians had changed...
THE GRAVEYARD HEART by Roger Zelazny
Set primarily in our own times and the immediate future decades, Moore, a young engineer, finds himself falling for a pretty woman (Leota) who is a member of the Set, an exclusive, select society of people who jump through time by sleeping in frozen states for years and then reviving for short stretches, during which they attend extravagant parties and see how the world has changed. Moore has a rival for Leota's affections, the cynical poet Unger, and the story gravitates about how these three interact and how they come to experience and understand the strange subculture and effects of the Set. Zelazny wrote in a very ornate style that was a little challenging for me to follow...some readers (including a few literary critics) dig that way of writing, but it seemed to interfere with the story as far I was concerned...
PURPLE PRIESTESS OF THE MAD MOON by Leigh Brackett
Reminding me peculiarly of the bizarre video to David Bowie's 2016 song Blackstar, it is Mars in the near future after humanity has begun to settle it and the native Martians have their own culture and history. Seldon, who has studied Martian history while on Earth, visits the Red Planet to see things firsthand and finds himself suddenly abducted and taken to a hidden site where a secret Martian sect is holding a special ritual. This very ominous tale...which has overtones of horror à la Stephen King...also brought to my mind one of the scariest tales I have ever read: The Whimper of Whipped Dogs by Harlan Ellison. In other words, readers prone to nightmares should skip this one. By the way, Leigh Brackett wrote the screenplay to the Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back...
Next week I continue my look at the year 1964 in short science fiction...
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