Here are my reactions to four more short stories from 1965 appearing in the anthology World's Best Science Fiction: 1966, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr. I found the below tales to be most interesting, especially the first one which blew me away. I've been generally impressed with the editors' picks for the year's best...I just wished they'd synced the year on the anthology's title with the actual year the stories were released. In any event, here are my reviews for this week...
TRAVELER'S REST by David I. Masson
One of the more intriguing science fiction stories I've read, this tale of a world on which the rate of passage of time varies by the distance to time waves radiating from a singularity high up in the mountains...where a vicious stalemate of a war for survival is ongoing against a ruthless enemy. A soldier at the front is informed of his "retirement" and gets to live years of his life in peace while raising his family in the idyllic lower lands...while hardly any time at all passes high up on the front. The conclusion to it all made me want to shout, "What, WHAT!!!"...
UNCOLLECTED WORKS by Lin Carter
An elderly literary critic is being interviewed, and he has a lot to say. His most significant memory, though, is of a man not of letters but rather an inventor of a device that he claimed produced all the works of literature going back from the beginning of writing and up to the present...and then on into the future. The critic knows that nothing can be proven, but what the inventor told him about the past discoveries of lost works has convinced him...after he initially rebuffs his outlandish claims. This story has the ring of fatalism, whereby the future is predetermined and can be known in detail and far in advance with enough accurate data and the ability to process it. Maybe the critic was convinced, but I'm not...still, an interesting premise for a story...
VANISHING POINT by Jonathan Brand
The Galactic Federation (yes, that's what they called it) has invited Earth's ambassador to meet its representative on a special world where the environment has been specially manufactured to mirror conditions on our home planet. The diplomat, ship engineer and three other crew members meet a human there who speaks on behalf of the Federation and tries to make the guests feel at home. But the engineer...who is later relating his experiences as a bedtime story for his two little daughters...begins to feel something amiss, especially during those times their host retreats off into the distance to pick some fruit. The author's main point in this story was a bit difficult for me to visualize, but I got the general gist and thought it pretty inspired. It all has to due with visual perspective and its effects on distant objects...
IN OUR BLOCK by R.A. Lafferty
This is a brief, funny tale about a run-down old street and the decrepit shanties lining it. Two townsfolk, Art and Jim, can't figure out why the businesses there can do what they do with their limited space and material. It's their own lackadaisical attitude about the strange goings on around them that's as quizzical as the unusual people they encounter. The obvious answer to the mystery completely escapes them as they are too stuck in their own comfortable thought patterns...
Next week I conclude my look back at the year 1965 in short science fiction...
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