Weekly Short Stories: 1974 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are my reactions to the next two science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology The 1975 Annual World's Best SF, covering what editor Donald A. Wollheim deemed to be the greatest tales from 1974.  That was a great year for me with music, with my favorites being Time in a Bottle (Jim Croce), Sunshine on My Shoulders (John Denver), Rock Your Baby (George McCrae), Number Nine Dream (John Lennon), Arabesque No. 1 (Isao Tomita), and You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet (Bachman-Turner Overdrive)...really good stuff.  But enough of that for now...below I discuss those two tales... 

TWIG by Gordon R. Dickson

Twig, like many sci-fi short stories, carries a lot of allegory with it, as on a distant planet the human settlers choose selfish expediency over the respect and preservation of the indigenous life.  

Farmers want to burn the native plants off the fields they want to plant, but their elected representative Hacker has been blocking them...based on the words of an orphaned girl named Twig who, raised in the planet's wilds, knows that there is an intelligent plant-spirit named Plant-Grandfather who unites all native plant life there and converses mentally with her.  Once Hacker's term ends, though, the settlers send out a hit squad to eliminate him and capture Twig, who they hope will reveal Plant-Grandfather's physical location deep under the surface.  This story also examines the nature of life and death...can't get any heavier than that, I guess...

CATHADONIAN ODYSSEY by Michael Bishop

Another allegorical tale about human expediency and short-sightedness on another world.  Here a spaceship stops off at a planet resembling a paradise, with the only visible animal life being armless monkey-like creatures with three legs...so what do the humans do? They massacre every one of them they see for sport, then leave (while conveniently omitting this life form in their reports).  A later three-person craft to this planet will unknowingly pay the price for their brutality...the only survivor of the strange crash landing, a woman, befriends the only one of these creatures she sees.  The story's ending is beyond surprising and makes a big point about the unintended consequences of one's careless or even cruel actions...

Next week I finish my look at science fiction short stories from 1974...