Well, here it is Wednesday once again and time for my weekly review of selected short stories, continuing my focus on science fiction year-by-year as they came out. Below are my reactions to the next four stories appearing in the retrospective anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1968, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, and presenting their choices of 1967's top tales. At the time I was ten going on eleven and not yet into reading science fiction...although I would soon get hold of some of my father's old sci-fi paperbacks and become a lifelong fan of the genre...
POPULATION IMPLOSION by Andrew J. Offutt
Written from the perspective of 1967, this story presents a scenario beginning in the late twentieth century when the world's population approaches five billion...and then elderly people begin to simply stop living, beginning with all of the oldest and progressively going to those in younger age groups. What is causing these deaths? No medical causes can be discerned, only that people at specified ages automatically die. The narrator is in on this ominous trend early on and eventually comes up with an explanation...which delves pretty heavily into metaphysics and the nature of life and "souls"...
I HAVE NO MOUTH, AND I MUST SCREAM by Harlan Ellison
I have a somewhat perverse fascination with the early twentieth century horror writer H.P. Lovecraft's stories. This story by Ellison takes Lovecraft and brings him into the computer age, producing a tale chillingly foretelling the Matrix movie series as a supercomputer has taken captive within it the last five survivors of a humanity foolish enough to build a ring of supercomputers worldwide to help them fight each other...until the machines unite against their creators: now where have I heard this before? The ending is so disturbing I have trouble visualizing how anyone could accurately adapt it to screen...
THE SWORD SWALLOWER by Ron Goulart
Goulart reportedly had a recurring character in his stories, a shape-shifting man named Ben Jolson who can impersonate anyone. In this tale he is assigned to discover the source of a series of mysterious kidnappings of political and government leaders. The setting is pretty far into the future as humanity is now an interstellar race with the established ruling planet of Barnum being challenged by Earth. I enjoyed the humor of the characters, their dialog and the action. Lots of laughs here, although I felt it was a bit shallow in the final analysis...
CORANDA by Keith Roberts
It's way off in the distant future on Earth, now nearly completely engulfed by ice in a sweeping Ice Age that has caused sea life to adapt itself to life on the surface. Human society has regressed to a much more primitive and superstitious state, with the Ice Mother deity dominating people's actions and explanations for the harshness around them. It's a dog-eat-dog world, and the community's beautiful young woman princess Coranda offers herself as the prize for the man who can brave the long ice journey on his ice yacht to fight, kill and bring back the fabled and dangerous unicorn...the existence of which the story cleverly explains. The ending to this very harsh and bloody tale gives some hope for humanity's future as the "winner" makes an unexpected decision concerning his last surviving, injured rival. Difficult to read, but with a good conclusion...
Next week I conclude my look at the year 1967 in the genre of short science fiction...
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