Below are my reviews of the next four 1970 sci-fi short stories as they appeared in the book World's Best Science Fiction 1971, presenting the editors' choices from the previous year. I remember that I read a lot in '70...some books I enjoyed then were The City Boy by Herman Wouk (an English class assignment), Nightmares and Geezenstacks by Fredric Brown (a science fiction short story anthology), Lost Horizon and Random Harvest by James Hilton and Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings by Charles Hapgood...all published years earlier. I also thought this was a great year musically, dominated by the Beatles' swan song album release Let It Be and Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison's solo efforts (Instant Karma, Maybe I'm Amazed, and My Sweet Lord among them). But there were a lot of other musical acts that produced some great, memorable songs that year...maybe my personal life wasn't all that hot in 1970, but reading and music rocked! And now here's my take on those four stories...
NOBODY LIVES ON BURTON STREET by Gregory Benford
Implicit within this brief tale is the notion, which I believe to be erroneous, that if people were allowed to just "let off steam" and physically act out their frustrations in controlled violence then society would remain peaceful and folks would be happier. On Burton Street in the future, an angry mob approaches the peacekeeper force...but it's all contrived: the rioters have been preselected by psychological analysis and the police are really android robots with fake blood: it's all a charade. To me, the more a person reacts with violence to their problems the more they will use it in the future...but not according to the pop psychology used in this story...
WHATEVER BECAME OF THE MCGOWANS? by Michael G. Coney
On a beautiful, newly settled planet with only plant life (other than the human settlers), Richard and his pregnant wife Sandra begin to experience time lapses and curious phenomena concerning their own bodies. And they wonder whatever happened to their neighbors the McGowan family, who seemed to have abandoned their large estate, which is always visible to them with its small clump of trees in front. I could see where this story was going early on, but I had not anticipated the ending...which had an interesting "scientific" explanation for it all...
THE LAST TIME AROUND by Arthur Sellings
This is a tale about the contrasting differences in aging between spacemen traveling close to the speed of light and those remaining on Earth. Such an astronaut has made a career of going on missions to the stars...although from his own vantage point he is living a normally-aging life, those on Earth and the surrounding Solar System settlements see him as more than 200 years old. This has always complicated romantic relationships for him, until one woman comes up with "the solution", something I take strong issue with in the same way that I've always thought the Star Trek device of "beaming" people around was very faulty in conception...but you'll have to read the story to know where I'm going on this...
GREYSPUN'S GIFT by Neal Barrett, Jr.
A quirky, funny young woman with her tolerant husband and little son finds a very tall, obviously alien man sitting on a bench outside their New York apartment. He is clearly awkward and out of place on Earth, since he is, after all, a visiting alien. Helping him further to make him stand out less to others...and that's difficult since he has eight arms and legs and no discernible facial features...she takes Greyspun, as he calls himself, into their home where he asks them "What do humans do?" You see, his species' role in the universe, i.e. what they "do", is just what he is doing: discerning and understanding in an empathetic way the other intelligent life forms around him. His hosts don't know how to answer him, but the woman takes him on a tour of the city. Sadly, Greyspun finds the answer to his question, leading to a sudden, somber ending for what had been a lighthearted tale, with tragic consequences...
Next week I finish my look back at 1970's science fiction short stories...
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