Today I jump onward to a new year in my ongoing project of reviewing selected old science fiction short stories: 1972, as they appeared in the anthology The 1973 World's Best SF, edited by Donald Wollheim and Arthur Saha and containing their personal choices as the best in the genre from the preceding year. In my personal life I was going from the tenth to eleventh grade in high school...books like Lord Jim, The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby were English class assignments. Early that year I wrote my first lengthy paper, a composition about Bob Dylan and his song lyrics...it was a chore to do but the teacher liked it a lot. In the world "out there" humans landed on the moon in December 1972 and haven't been back since, while the NFL's Miami Dolphins ran the table, going undefeated the regular season and playoffs...this also hasn't been done by anyone since. Here are my reactions to the first three stories in Wollheim's book...
GOAT SONG by Poul Anderson
In this story Anderson envisioned a future in which humanity had gradually abandoned its responsibilities over the years to machines and computers, to the culminating point in which a supreme artificial intelligence has emerged to dominate people's lives in every facet...with an "iron" fist, so to speak: sounds like we're well on that path already, doesn't it? A man given to provocative poetry and strange music whose love died wants the governing SUM machine empire to resurrect her as its ideology claims to be possible, but first he must past the test. This tale contains a lot of poetic language while exposing people's superstitious natures and our tendency to sink into dependency on other parties for comfort and convenience's sake...
THE MAN WHO WALKED HOME by James Tiptree, Jr.
Out in the remote western United States a time travel experiment goes terribly awry, leading directly to a worldwide cataclysm that brings civilization to its knees. The time traveler, astronaut John Delgano, is still seen once a year at the epicenter for only a few short seconds...over the decades and centuries this event becomes a big local event drawing crowds as well as superstition and religious movements. It's all very mystifying and confusing, but the ending of this disturbing tale does explain the state of things pretty well while bringing up a completely unique angle on this well-worn topic of time travel...
OH, VALINDA! by Michael G. Coney
On a distant world with a developing humanoid civilization, Earthmen are there exploiting the resources for profit...while withholding technology that could help the native Canteks escape their dependence on fossil fuels and the ensuing planet-wide pollution. In the Earthling-owned polar region two opposing camps are racing to the marketplace...with giant worms underneath their respective icebergs propelling them onward: what a cool science fiction concept. In one party two men have hired a Cantek expert on these worms, Skunder, to try and beat out their opponent. But Skunder, with the fresh memory of his beloved Valinda dying due to the earlier negligence of that opponent, has his own agenda for the mission. A story about prejudice, honor, and revenge...
Next week I continue my look at sci-fi short stories from 1972...
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