Weekly Short Stories: 1965 Science Fiction, Part 4

With my reviews of the following three stories I conclude my examination of some of 1965's finer sci-fi short stories, as selected by editors Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Clark for their anthology World's Best Science Fiction: 1966 (the series regrettably puts the year of publication in the title instead of the year of focus).  Unlike with the previous anthology series featuring Isaac Asimov and Martin Greenberg as editors which came out in the late 1980s and early 90s while covering much earlier stories (from 1939 through 1963), Wollheim's series offers no such distant hindsight, selecting their stories the very next year after they came out.  I bring this up because in a later article I'll be discussing the difference, but for now here are my reactions to the three final '65 tales...

MASQUE OF THE RED SHIFT by Fred Saberhagen

Yet another short story in Saberhagen's "berserker" series of ancient automated warships of mass destruction that have invaded our Milky Way galaxy, in this one there is a galactic human government with outbreaks of rebel planets fighting for independence.  While High Lord Nogora observes from his ship what can only be described as a black hole, a berserker has intercepted a ship transporting rebel prisoners to Nogora for interrogation.  Nogora's frozen, half-dead half-brother holds the key to this story of political intrigue while an incredibly Borg-like transformation of one of the prisoners steers it to its resolution...if I were into the series I probably would have liked this story more...

THE CAPTIVE DJINN by Christopher Anvil

A human mining engineer is being held prisoner on a planet populated by hostile feline humanoids who are at a lower technological level than humans and regard their enhanced abilities as magical.  The captive demonstrates this "magic" as he fools his captors into giving him all the ingredients by which he can make his escape.  I came away from Anvil's story thinking he was making an analogy to the attitudes many people have had toward modern technology and putting it out as a humorous satire.  This story had a Hogan's Heroes flavor to it, with the imprisoned running rings around the imprisoners without them knowing it...

THE GOOD NEW DAYS by Fritz Leiber

It's the future on Earth as the advent of robots and automation has created a situation among the swelling population where competition for useful jobs is prohibitive. The solution, instead of creating more leisure time among the population to pursue the arts, sciences, and other interests, is to create a plethora of new, essentially useless jobs with social status determined by how many jobs one has.  A family living in the slums...albeit provided with all the essentials to live...nevertheless cannot come to grips with the "way things are", especially the four grown brothers' feisty, stubborn mother.  And now it seems that the robots are beginning to malfunction...or is something ominous developing among a unified technology that humanity completely depends upon?  This story was difficult to read through, but its main points seem portentous...

Next week I begin my look back at the year 1966 in short science fiction...