Today I continue to examine 1976 science fiction short stories as they appeared in the following year's anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1977 Annual World's Best SF. In 1976 there was a lot of good music: I especially liked the albums Year of the Cat by Al Stewart and A New World Record by Electric Light Orchestra...the latter contained my "song of the year" in Livin' Thing. Other favorite songs included Billy Joel's Angry Young Man, Judy Collin's Send in the Clowns and John Miles' Music. Below are my reviews of two more stories from that year, starting with one with which many are already familiar because of its later film adaptation...
THE BICENTENNIAL MAN by Isaac Asimov
In Asimov's fictional future universe robots play a big part, subject to his Three Laws of Robotics as well as receiving fear and resentment from much of the human population. One robot, named Andrew Martin, has a desire to achieve "freedom" from being owned property. He achieves this but finds obstacles to acceptance everywhere he turns. Finally he concludes that only by becoming human himself will he be accepted and the story flows from there. It's clearly an analogy to the American civil rights movement, the abolishment of discriminatory laws, and the slow transformation of attitudes about race. Isaac Asimov reportedly wrote this story as part of a doomed effort from someone else to compile an anthology of sci-fi tales relating to the ongoing Bicentennial theme...he was the only writer to come through with one, and it became famous...
THE CABINET OF OLIVER NAYLOR by Barrington J. Bayley
Wow, this packed tale has a lot to discuss: Britain chooses to be economically isolated from the world in the 21st century and the resulting many innovations there include a device that totally eliminates speed-of-light barriers to space travel...fast-forward a few years and we have a tinkerer/inventor in his own craft, traveling at a velocity of hundreds of powers of light speed. His aim is philosophical speculation about the nature of identity, spurred on by his invention of a device that creates alternative universes whose characters are trapped in endless loops...he likes the isolation of deep-space travel for his musings. But he has a distraction: a hitchhiker who wants to reach another individual whose ship is located many universes away (yes I said that) on the edge of a matterless lake: what's that, you ask...only something very, very scary! How the mission pans out shows the petty, deeply-flawed and stagnant nature of people amid the most incredible technological advances ever conceived: kind of reminded me about where we are today...
Next week I conclude my look at 1976 short science fiction...
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