Below I discuss two more 1976 science fiction short stories from the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1977 Annual World's Best SF, covering the editor's picks for the previous year. I found today's selections special and appealing...I wish more of the listed stories were like them. As far as 1976 was concerned personally, I ran my last running race in it (with dubious results) until 2008, and I became attached to studying foreign languages, including Chinese and Russian which I continue to pursue to this day...it was fun learning the Russian Cyrillic writing system that year. In sports the Miami Dolphins had one of their two losing seasons (barely) during Don Shula's 35-year reign as their head coach...oh, to return to a semblance of that consistency of quality. And the Yankees finally returned to the World Series after more than a decade's absence, only to be swept by the Cincinnati Reds. Here are my reactions to those stories...
THE HERTFORD MANUSCRIPT by Richard Cowper
I loved the 1960 film adaptation of H.G. Wells' novel The Time Machine, starring Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux. Cowper's story is a sequel to this classic and picks up where Wells' story ended: the time traveler, frustrated at the war-mongering world of his time and unbelieving friends, gets in his machine and disappears forever. But where when did he go? In this story the author lays out an intriguing answer, as well as a lesson for us all in this time of pandemic when the masses resort to superstition, unfounded theories and scapegoating instead of following rational, science-based responses. Very memorable tale, although I did feel a little discomfort at a different author adding to the work of a previous one...
NATURAL ADVANTAGE by Lester Del Rey
An intelligent spaceship of non-humans are dismayed on their long voyage to study an cloud of deadly anti-matter as it approaches a star with a planetary system when they discover intelligent life on the clouded third planet, indicated by the emitted radio signals. When they finally meet up in space with a human delegation from Earth, they are dismayed with the humans' scientific and linguistic backwardness as well as doubting their capacity to develop the needed technology fast enough to avoid the impending cataclysm in time, only ten years ahead. But humanity delivers a stunning surprise at the end to the frustrated would-be rescuers, highlighted by one of the greatest final lines I have ever read in any work of fiction...
Next week: more about sci-fi short stories from 1976...
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