Below I review four more science fiction short stories from 1973 as they appeared in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1974 Annual World's Best SF, featuring selections from the previous year. 1973 is memorable to me for some of my favorite songs, like Love and Happiness by Al Green, Hummingbird by Seals and Crofts, Ramblin' Man by the Allman Brothers, and Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin...the last, although originally released in late '71 getting much play throughout the year on rock radio. Secretariat broke the 25-year drought of horse racing's Triple Crown winners with its incredible 31-length victory in the Belmont Stakes, and "my" Miami Dolphins followed up on its perfect 1972 season with another championship in '73. But back to those four stories...
WEED OF TIME by Norman Spinrad
What if you were immortal in the sense that you simultaneously experienced every single moment within you life span, from your entry into the world to your death? This kind of mind experiment is embedded within this brief tale of a young man so afflicted, after eating of a weed brought in from a survey of another planet...the plant alters its users' perception of subjective time by creating the scenario I just described. In the introduction to this story, the editor brought to mind a similarly-theme story, more famous story: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut...
A MODEST GENIUS by Vadim Shefner
Shefner was a Russian writer and poet who wrote this satirical story apparently as a concealed commentary on conditions in his Soviet Union. A remarkable, natural inventive genius gets no respect and much derision for his efforts and products while a woman who rejected him marries a man within the "system" who gets lauded for asinine, useless inventions such as a five-ton can opener that users must pay the State a fee to use. This story, translated from Russian, probably made a lot more sense to readers in Shefner's home country. Nevertheless the point is taken: here and now there's a lot of crap out there in the arts, literature, and mass media put out by uninspired and untalented people getting rich off their mediocre "works" while others are ignored for their own gifts...
THE DEATHBIRD by Harlan Ellison
The anthology's editor, in his introduction to this problematic story, called it "new wave" referring to the trendy type of cryptic fictional writing...it's still going on, sad to say. Ellison alternates his short chapters between a college philosophy class exam, a exposition that reverses the Biblical story of Eden raising the Snake and diminishing God as a madman, someone's anecdotal memories, and a distantly-future, dying Earth as Nathan Stack is brought up from his long sleep in Earth's depths by Dira to meet his destiny. Confusing? I thought so...I also thought that such a talented writer as Ellison could have done a better job of getting his message across without breaking up and obscuring his narrative. Still, I think I got the gist of it all...it belongs to that genre of science fiction that tries to put a different spin on religion, not exactly my "cup of tea"...
EVANE by E.C. Tubb
An astronaut sent on a decades-long expedition to a distant new world for humanity to inhabit is alone in his ship...except for his talking shipboard computer, which he has name Evane. Stuck within his cramped quarters and desperately lonely, he eventually prods the computer into revealing his special role as one of the millions of spaceship pilots...since after all the process is basically automatic anyway. In the Great Expansion of humanity, then, why is his long-term presence here so necessary? The eventual answer is shocking...but cynically proves all too true to the genre of hard science fiction...
Next week I conclude my reviews of 1973 science fiction short stories...
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