The Great Science Fiction Stories 9 (1947)

The ninth in this anthology series, this volume contains stories that were being written and revised soon after the close of World War II. It’s obvious that the shadow of that war and its ending hangs over the stories, as more than the usual number are concerned with the after-effects of atomic warfare. It’s a stereotype that science fiction is inherently optimistic, and a number of stories show the reality opposing the stereotype.

“Little Lost Robot” by Isaac Asimov (Astounding) – I admit to not being very fond of Asimov’s famous Robot series. It’s not that I don’t like them; it’s just that I don’t think they are as amazing as is generally held. For me, this story is a great example of their weakness. There is no denying the impact of Asimov’s robotic laws both on fiction and in developing technology, but that doesn’t mean that all the stories that used those laws are necessarily good. While a lot of science fiction uses aliens as the gimmick on which to write other genres of fiction, Asimov instead used robots.

“Little Lost Robot” is, really, a mystery, a tidy little logic problem based on the premise of the robotic laws. The characterization, often a problem with Asimov, is decidedly flat. Asimov actively makes the characters share animosity towards one another for no reason that is apparent in the story itself, while the story implies that they should get along, not just for a common purpose, but because they are smart and thoughtful people. The story ends up being ingenious, but not really “great”. It makes a terrific example of what was good about the writing of that time, but I have a lot of trouble making it signpost of the best science fiction has to offer.

“Tomorrow's Children” Poul Anderson (Astounding) – Given the current interest in post-apocalyptic stories, Anderson’s first story in this anthology series might be interesting to modern readers. I find it interesting that the story comes out of Astounding, whose editor John Campbell believed in human exceptionalism and the ability to rise above any obstacle. Then again, the story does go to an interesting place if only because it is far more realistic than most of the current post-apocalyptic stories. Still, it’s a bit over-long and flat in its delivery, making it a little difficult to read. However, given that it was Anderson’s first published work, it serves as a sign of what was to follow in a long and brilliant career.

“Child's Play” by William Tenn (Astounding) – There seems to be a running motif, usually found in stories by Kuttner and Moore, of toys from the future coming back to wreak havoc on contemporary characters. This is another of those stories by a mostly forgotten writer, William Tenn. The motif allows the story to dance along the edge of whimsy and dread, but they usually end up strongly on the side of dread. This one cuts a little harder, since it involves biogenetics, and the narrator may not be entirely sane as he plays with a child’s science kit from the future. While the ending is telegraphed pretty early on, it is still an evocative piece.

“Time and Time Again” by H. Beam Piper (Astounding) – Piper is probably best known for his Fuzzy novels, which are enjoying a resurrection among modern readers. “Time and Time Again” is an interesting twist on a time travel story, probably fairly ground-breaking in its day but a little clichéd now. If you could travel back into your own past, how would you change things? Piper chooses to use an altruist as his protagonist, so his interest is in changing rotten history rather than just making his life easier. It’s a departure from the Piper I know and so valuable for that alone. The story also makes an interesting introduction into the possibility of time travel, forming an interesting resonance with the recent move Looper.

“Tiny and the Monster” by Theodore Sturgeon (Astounding) – Science fiction of this time is stereotypically known for its alien invasion story, but Sturgeon turns that trope around a bit. The gimmick ends up being a little bit hokey, but Sturgeon’s writing is fun and breezy. Sturgeon shows off his ability to build characters in this story as well, adding straightforward humor to a story that otherwise could be considered twee.

“E for Effort” by T. L. Sherred (Astounding) - This is a fairly well-known piece, reprinted in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. It’s an interesting take on time travel, imagining that instead of physically moving backwards in time, the characters can merely see into the past. They decide to use this technology to make movies, and the story becomes an interesting view into mid-century moviemaking with a slow progression to something bigger. The writing is very much like Robert Heinlein’s short stories, with a mildly cynical take on culture and human nature. Its climax comes fast and requires a few re-readings to fully understand, but it’s powerful in its delivery. I’ve thought about this story often recently and was delighted to uncover it again.

“Letter to Ellen” by Chan Davis (Astounding) – One of the characteristics of some of the best short stories from this general time period is the attempt to put a human emotional face on technological changes. Science and invention were blossoming at the end of World War II, and the best science fiction stories attempted to put an emotional element on those advances, weighing if they were perhaps not worth their cost. “Letter to Ellen” is an interesting story about technology that we’ve really only begun to explore to its full potential in the past decade, so there is a predictive element to Davis’s writing. However, he points out a bias that grows because of the use of the technology, a bias that doesn’t feel logical but I’m sure would happen if our science reaches the state described in the novel. Interestingly enough, it’s a similar question raised by the novel Frankenstein, but from a different point of view.

“The Figure” by Edward Grendon (Astounding) – This story is very much like an episode of Twilight Zone: short with a twist ending that leaves the audience dangling to find out what happens next. While it is fun, the twist is unfortunately telegraphed early and often. It may well be that decades of watching Twilight Zone and similarly themed and paced TV shows has made it easy to spot the twists of such things.

“With Folded Hands . . .” by Jack Williamson (Astounding) – This is perhaps the most well-known story in this collection. I’ve also come across it in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, so it is fairly well regarded by readers and critics.

I think this story is a nice counterpoint to the Robot stories by Asimov, wherein the three laws of robotics generally force the robots to be relatively docile and benign. But Williamson extrapolates the idea of telling a near-perfect machine to help man to ironic but plausible extremes. Given the near-universal understanding that the greatest threat to man is man itself, it’s fairly amazing that no one attempted to write this story before. In addition, the story has Williamson’s knack for placing a contemporary man of the 40s into a future that is easily recognizable, but different enough to allow there to be space for the story. While a lot of science fiction projects a future where the world is far less complicated, Williamson also recognizes that no matter how automated the world might become, the nature of people is less likely to change quickly.

“The Fires Within” by Arthur C. Clarke (Fantasy) – This is a strong example of Clarke’s own puzzle stories, involving characters trying to solve a mystery. To me, Clarke does this much better than Asimov, especially because his characters are far more believable. Clarke also doesn’t fall back on the clichés as models for what he writes. The framing device for this story is fairly unique, definitely unpredictable, and a delight when fully revealed. The final few paragraphs may seem trite, especially to an audience familiar with the twists and turns of The Twilight Zone, but that ending is merely Clarke’s nifty way of closing out his story, rather than the shocking purpose for the story in the first place. It’s not a weighty story and not Clarke’s best, but it is a good example of what he does when he truly excels (see “The Star” and “Nine Billion Names of God”).

“Zero Hour” by Ray Bradbury (Planet Stories) – “Zero Hour” is a great example of Ray Bradbury’s ability to take the mundane and turn it into something terrifying. The story focuses on fairly generic children’s games based on imagination, but as it proceeds, the sense of lurking dread grows and grows. The story begins with the adults laughing on the childish games until coincidences begin piling up. Bradbury pulls off a neat trick, allowing the reader to know exactly what is going on, so the horror comes not from our discovery of the truth but of the slow realization by the adult characters about what is going to happen. I’m reminded of the lengthier “Something Wicked This Way Comes” in the story’s basis on the usually innocent, but the the brevity of “Zero Hour” compacts and condenses the chill.

“Hobbyist” by Eric Frank Russell (Astounding) – Eric Frank Russell is a mostly forgotten writer from the 40s and 50s, but whose admirers think he deserves a revival. “Hobbyist” concerns an explorer who ends up far from human culture with no fuel. His lone companion on the planet he finds himself on is a macaw named Laura. Russell spends some time justifying choosing a macaw, but I’ve never been a fan of pet birds, so the explanations ring hollow. But it does give the lead character someone to talk to and to provide a second reaction to the story’s events for the reader.

The planet the explorer finds himself on is lush and lively, but something about it unsettles him. It was pretty clear to me what that something was, but it takes the trained explorer a while to figure it out. And just as he struggles to understand the cause of his concern, the action accelerates and gives the explorer an extremely deus ex machina way home.

Russell’s writing has a fine style and subtle humor, more subtle than the story that follows it, for example. Russell also raises some huge questions, especially in the last few paragraphs, but his handling of those large questions feels a little trite. Nonetheless, the story is engrossing despite the macaw and the “sense of humor” she displays.

“Exit the Professor” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (Thrilling Wonder Stories) – It’s astonishing how small a role humor plays in longer fiction. “Exit the Professor” is another of Kuttner and Moore’s outrageously charming stories where the science fiction takes a backseat to making the reader laugh. The story is based on a fairly common premise—a few individuals have taken the next step evolutionary step, but the story imagines them being brought up as, for lack of a better word, rednecks. And when their difference is uncovered by a visiting professor, all sorts of mayhem ensues as they race to keep their secret from the world at large.

“Thunder and Roses” by Theodore Sturgeon (Astounding) – Asimov makes the point that atomic destruction certainly seemed to be on everyone’s minds as reflected in the stories of 1947. With the dramatic end of World War II and the revelation of the resources available via atomic power, there was perhaps reason to be fearful. Sturgeon’s story is a powerful piece set after the United States has been devastated by a surprise attack. The narrator stumbles across an important secret and must weigh whether to use it, balancing his instinct against the request of an unexpected companion. The writing is contemplative and compelling, and it’s difficult to not feel for the narrator as he puzzles through his final days in a city dying from fallout.

The Great Science Fiction Stories 6 (1944)

1944 is the year of Clifford Simak and his City series, with three entries in this volume. Isaac Asimov admits to Simak being one of the important role models for his own writing in the introductions to the individual stories in this volume he co-edited with Martin Greenberg. This may be another lesson in how we are losing the roots of the science fiction that is available today; I seriously doubt City or any other works by Simak (who by the way has been named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America) are available outside of used bookstores. If you read my blog regularly, you'll recall I've had some issues with Simak—I don't think his prose has aged particularly gracefully, which may also be a cause for his being shunted aside for more modern things.

"Far Centaurus" by A. E. van Vogt (Astounding) This story describes man's first exploration of other solar systems as an experimental ship is sent to the star Centaurus, moving near the speed of light so that centuries pass outside the ship while only months seem to pass inside. However, when the explorers reach Centaurus they find that they lost the race to their own descendants, who came up with a faster mode of travel. The explorers then have to deal with their own alienness in a culture not like the one they know.
This story was a little disappointing to me because it sets itself up as a very cool locked room problem with a great structural twist—that the characters only wake up from their frozen sleep every few months and never interact except by the messages they leave for one another. But this set-up is cast completely aside in order for the ship to reach Centaurus and find humanity's future. The denouement is something of a silly race to return to their rightful time, and lacks any of the potential that the story began with.

"Deadline" by Cleve Cartmill (Astounding) This is the first time I have ever come across a story by Cleve Cartmill, although ISDB lists him as publishing short stories from 1941 to 1956 and a series of novels from 1949 to 1975(!). This particular story may be the weakest in this collection, as it is a not too ambiguous allegory of Allied resistance infiltrating Germany in search of atomic bomb secrets. The author does away with the task of coming up with names for cities, countries and people by merely reversing them—so Germany beomes Sixa and its people the Sixans. Confronting them are the Seilla. We get to follow our hero Roby as he accidentally confronts and then falls in with resistance leader Ylas in an effort to reach the Sixan capital of Nilreq. I suppose the adventure aspects are interesting but it seems worn out by the time I read it in the 21^st century, and I find its preachiness and the whole name thing to mark this as monumentally flawed.

"The Veil of Astellar" by Leigh Brackett (Thrilling Wonder Stories) Brackett also belongs to that school of "weird science fiction" that I believe has its roots back in H. P. Lovecraft. Oftentimes, she is more concerned with creating an atmosphere of strangeness than with advancing a plot, but she generally keeps it under better control than C. L. Moore when she writes solo. But Brackett does always come back to the plot, and this one concerns a terrible secret that is making liners that ply the space between the planets of the solar system disappear with all hands and passengers. Brackett makes this a personal story with an interesting turn in narrative focus (how often is the narrator, especially in the 1940s, the antagonist of the story?) with even more Lovecraftian touches, as we discover a "race" of space vampires. How can humanity survive?

"Sanity" by Fritz Leiber (Astounding) When I first came to this story, I was surprised, given my fondness for Leiber and his general regard among critics. However, I had to remind myself that Leiber is better known for fantasy (which of course led me to wonder if there is a market for a similar anthology series but with a fantastic focus). Checking around, I find that "Sanity" is also included in The Best of Fritz Leiber, indicating that the editor of that collection also felt it was good, though it seems to me to be far weaker than a lot of Leiber that I have read. It's a fairly simple plot regarding the relative madness of humans as individuals and as a society, with what I have come to think of as a Twilight Zone twist that is telegraphed way in advance of the conclusion of the story.

"Invariant" by John R. Pierce (Astounding) A very short work with an interesting premise but flawed execution. Again, I have never heard of John R. Pierce, and ISFDB lists sporadic output from 1930 to 1973. The premise is that a scientist works out a formula to retard aging by causing human tissues to return to the state they were in before he undertook the treatment. This means that no matter his injury short of catastrophe, his cells return to their original state, healing his body along the way. Unfortunately, this has some unexpected side effects, given that memory is created by altering neural pathways with each new memory. This is a fascinating idea that could have been expanded much further and made into something more gratifying than five pages.

"City" by Clifford D. Simak (Astounding) Simak posits a fascinating future for humanity as automation and technology make the need for cities obsolete. With the growth of the suburb (a relatively new idea in the mid-1940s) and with the advance of hydroponic agriculture, farms are no longer needed either. As a result, there is a glut of cheap land available outside the cities, which leads to a vast emigration to the pastoral. Those that remain in the cities struggle to maintain the lifestyle they know so well—what good is a chamber of commerce when the city and the businesses the chamber supports are gone? Simak's solution is ingenious though perhaps not entirely plausible. Interestingly, given recent demographic trends, at least in the US, it seems the opposite of what Simak foresaw is happening—people are returning to the cities in large numbers.

"Arena" by Fredric Brown (Astounding) Fans of the original Star Trek series may recognize the name of this short story, given that the classic episode of Kirk creating gunpowder in a battle against a representative of the lizard like Gorn race is a fan favorite. However, the source for the screenplay is decidedly different than the TV episode in pretty much every way (and to say more would be to give too much away). "Arena" is an interesting puzzle story—the protagonist has to solve a problem for some important reason—with an ingenious climax. Sadly, the alien is big ball of fur with claws rather than the beloved Gorn. Nonetheless, this is a fascinating story to read both for its insight into the philosophy guiding the writers of the mid-1940s as well as providing insight into how screenplays are written (another would be "Farewell to the Master" by Harry Bate which became the classic movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still, to which the story bears very little resemblance other than the name Gort). This story is also in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

"Huddling Place" by Clifford D. Simak (Astounding) This short story is also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, marking it as one of the best science fiction stories between 1938 and 1963. I'll be blunt here—I pretty much detest this story, and given it is the third time I have read it in the past couple of years, it makes my skin crawl. Granted that the premise of most speculative fiction is, well, fantastic in nature, it takes some willing suspension of disbelief. The whole premise of aliens or super-science requires imagination, and sometimes lots of it. But in "Huddling Place", the premise is that a single man holds the future of humanity in his hands, if only he can follow the oath he took as a doctor and travel to Mars to save the life of a Martian scientist—who also happens to be his friend. But given all the reasons to do so, he cannot be convinced to make the trip, thus dooming humanity. Given Astounding editor Campbell's penchant for showing man at his best and overcoming all obstacles, this story feels like an anomaly. And though the story desperately tries to make the protagonist as sympathetic as possible, I've always had trouble buying it—he comes across as a foolish and selfish git. If anyone can explain to me why this story is supposed to be so good, I'd love to know.

"Kindness" by Lester del Rey (Astounding) In this story, del Rey ponders what it would be like for the last homo sapien in a world filled with the next step in evolution. Del Rey trod similar territory in his 1939 short story "The Day is Done", a somewhat maudlin meditation on the last Neanderthal in a world of home sapiens. This story is less sentimental, perhaps because its hook is fairly obvious just a few pages in. We often think of evolution moving in broad swaths, though extinction events capture our scientific attention at the moment. But someone had to be last, and these kinds of story humanize important moments in human history—its beginning and end. Science fiction, especially the stereotypical pulpy kind, often reveled in the coming race of supermen, but this is the only story I have ever read that doesn't measure its cost on the race but instead its cost on the individual.

"Desertion" by Clifford D. Simak (Astounding) This is my favorite of the City stories by Simak, showing as it does the potential of humanity as he deals with other species (as opposed to inexplicable flaws as in "The Huddling Place"). Explorers on Jupiter use advances in the biological sciences to remake themselves into creatures capable of exploring Jupiter without added equipment, duplicates of the native lifeforms there. But when explorers are sent out, they do not return. This story follows the last explorer and his faithful companion as they go out to learn the source of the disappearances. There is a nostalgia to this story that is touching, and it is powerful for its depiction of human relationships—often missing in the City stories. If I had had a vote, "Desertion" would have been in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame rather than "The Huddling Place."

"When the Bough Breaks" by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett ] (Astounding) "When the Bow Breaks" is a fascinating counterpart to "Mimsy Were the Borogroves" by the same authors in 1943. This time, instead of the children accidentally discovering future "toys" that advance them beyond the capacity of their human parents, this time tutors from the future are sent to train a six-month old child by that child's future self. It turns out the baby is the next stage in human evolution but until his greatness presents itself, he's going to be a miserable child and teenager. So his future self takes pity and seeks to speed up his growth. Unfortunately, his thoroughly modern and sublimely happy parents are ill-prepared for the changes being wrought upon their child. Kuttner and Moore again stock the story to its brim with whimsy, and this time the humor is not balanced against terror at all, unless it is the mild terror all new parents feel for the new alien in their midst. It turns out that those future superhumans aren't as smart as they think they are.

"Killdozer!" by Theodore Sturgeon (Astounding) Something of a cult classic among fans of science fiction, this story details mankind's first encounter with aliens as a construction crew tries to build an airstrip on a South Pacific island during World War II. In many ways, "Killdozer!" (note the exclamation point) defines the plot and structure of the great alien encounter stories and movies that follow it. There is some distraction as the technical descriptions of the construction tools and their use get in the way of advancing the plot—I get totally lost in the technical names and parts of steam shovels and dump trucks—but when the action happens, it's awesome and terrifying. This is a story that all fans of action and horror movies really should read, because there is nothing more terrifying than a possessed bulldozer.

"No Woman Born" by C. L. Moore (Astounding) Martin Greenberg, in his introduction to this story, praises it as the deepest of stories about the cyborg—the melding of man and machine. Rather than adhering to the stereotype, reveling in the awesome power that machinery could bring to the human form, this story ponders what happens to an entertainer tragically injured in a fire and brought back to life inside a metal shell. Perhaps it is the insight of a female writer that moves this story beyond the traditional, but "No Woman Born" contemplates the cost of such advancement both on the person and her closest companions. It also wonders if being better is perhaps a good thing if it only results in loneliness. I could not help thinking of Frederik Pohl's award-winning novel Man Plus as I read this short story.

The Great Science Fiction Stories 5 (1943)

I'm going to try a different approach with this anthology than I have with earlier books in the series. It seems to me that there is something of value to talking about all of the stories in the collection (though I may feel otherwise by the end of this posting). For some feeling it feels different that a "best of" book for an author, where I can talk about trends and movements in a small selection of an author's output. The stories in this anthology series have been picked as the best science fiction output for an entire year by renowned editors Martin Greenberg and Isaac Asimov, thus they all seem to deserve some discussion. I also happily admit I am being influenced by Jamie Todd Rubin's excellent ongoing blog, Vacation in the Golden Age of Science Fiction, the link for which you can find over there on the left side under "My Links."

Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore appeared to have dominated 1943, at least in the eyes of editors Martin Greenberg and Isaac Asimov. Not only did they get four co-written stories in the list of the best of 1943, C. L. Moore also got one in by herself. I think that there is a lesson here about current readers knowing their roots—I seriously doubt there are a lot of fans for Kuttner and Moore, either together or individually, in the world today. A good reason for that is the difficulty of finding any of their works. Bear in mind, I am buying these books used (or getting them from Paperback Swap), and while each author has a collection in the Best of anthology series from Ballantine in the mid-1970s, they too are difficult to come by. Fortunately, Planet Stories has been reprinting some of their series in a piecemeal fashion over time, but I don't believe any of these stories are contained in those volumes. One wonders how much of a market there is for such works.

"The Cave" by P. Schuyler Miller (Astounding) This story is a fascinating account of the accidental interaction between human explorers and native alien life. In it, Miller posits a fascinating ecology for an alien world, where Man is tolerated until he has proven he can be trusted or not. The human interloper in this case is a greedy selfish rascal, not representing the best of humanity, providing an interesting plot point as human exemplars are not used to make us appear infallible. Instead, it is the fallibility of man that is the focus and how that may well be the face of humanity that gets projected to the universe rather than the one we'd like to be our representative.

"The Halfling" by Leigh Brackett (Astounding) "The Halfling" acts as an accidental counterpoint to Miller's "The Cave" since it offers another aspect to the idea of man interacting with and surviving alien ecology. It's not a fair trade-off since Miller uses sentient aliens while Brackett is mostly concerned with climate and environment as adversary. But the end result is much the same: to be successful in exploration, humanity cannot strive to conquer—which is a more appropriate stance for the stereotypical pulp stories, perhaps of an earlier age—but must adapt. And the children shall lead them.

"Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett ] (Astounding) This story is also in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame as one of the greatest short science fiction stories of all time. Kuttner and Moore give their writing a whimsical air as they deal with potentially awful stuff. In this case, a far future scientist experimets with his new time machine by sending toys into the distant past or, as we call it, the mid-1940s. Children get hold of the toys and are educated quickly to the point where they would be average children in that future, but placing them far far in advance of children and even adults of the contemporary time. The whimsy Kuttner and Moore use acts as a counterweight to the real fear and desperation the children's parents feel as they watch their children become something literally alien. I have to wonder if Arthur Clarke was familiar with this story when he wrote Childhood's End, a novel that has many of the same themes (and given Clarke often wrote to the letters column of Astounding, it seems likely he was).

"Q. U. R." by Anthony Boucher (Astounding) Given the "best of" nature of most anthologies from this time, very often stories that involve humor are not included in order to make space for weightier fare. So it's pleasant that a story like "Q. U. R." has been included, showing that science fiction wasn't just drama all the time. This story masquerades as a biographical account of the birth and growth of the most powerful corporation in the world, the eponymous Q. U. R. But there are real science fiction elements here as well, such as robots who start to attain a mentality and emotions. Perhaps more interesting to a modern reader is the cause of the crisis which pushes the story—flawed design and interface, a subject that readers of the 1940s probably did not have much knowledge or need for but which resonates with every release of the latest pad or smartphone today.

"Clash by Night" novella by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lawrence O'Donnell ] (Astounding) This story is very much like modern military science fiction than what is stereotypical for the pulps, it can be seen as something of a forerunner forth explosion of that subgenre for today. Like military science fiction, this story follows the exploits of a soldier fighting a future technological war, focusing more on the characters than the technology. Kuttner and Moore do offer some exoticness to the mix by setting the story on a marine Venus, so that the weapons are sea-based, especially including submarines. The story doesn't bog down, moving as it does through rapid changes of locales and engaging many characters. Unfortunately, the conclusion of the last battle is symptomatic of the general weightlessness of the story—it really is what I call "popcorn fare"—and leaves nothing very memorable after the story is finished.

"Exile" by Edmond Hamilton (Super Science Stories) I'm hard-pressed to decide if "Exile" is funny or sad; perhaps like the very best comedy, the humor is based on a sorrowful subject. This is the shortest story in the bunch and involves a science fiction writer who discovers that he can transport himself to the worlds he writes about. A lot of the humor in the story derives from the audience of the narrator who mock him and think he is setting up some elaborate joke, but the final few paragraphs push this story into Twilight Zone territory, providing a pleasing gotcha that causes the reader to sit back and ponder the ramifications.

"Daymare" by Fredric Brown (Thrilling Wonder Stories) Brown ponders the use of hypnotism (still called by its original name, "mesmerism") as a weapon in "Daymare."The story is rather alarmist in its proposition, hypnotism supplemented by technology such that it can be used on masses of people rather than just individuals. Of more interest is the society that Brown has set up as the background for his musings—a nearly perfect culture, where murder is mostly unheard of—but one that is achieved with radical censorship. The exposition about this culture is used to advance the plot that the protagonist uncovers and tries to quash, so it fits nicely into a narrative that is otherwise a crime procedural. Except for the use of technology rather than magic (and honestly, magic is a better explanation for a mass-delusion weapon), "Daymare" feels very much like an early example of the vibrant modern sub-genre, urban fantasy.

"Doorway Into Time" by C. L. Moore (Famous Fantastic Mysteries) What a strange story and yet how very typical of C. L. Moore. A vastly powerful entity that collects beautiful objects uses his viewer that somehow can rip through the fabric of space and time to see…what? We're not exactly sure, but two humans stand in the way of his retrieving his latest objet d'art. Typical of Moore when she wrote alone, a great deal of the story is atmosphere and not very long on action—in fact the plot is fairly basic "man meets super-powerful alien yet comes out alive by total luck" fare. But this is an exemplum of the "weird" aspect of science fiction, especially from such writers as Moore—the universe is a big place and we don't know what is out there. And when we run into it, we may not know what to make of it. Such writing always seems to me to harken back to H.P. Lovecraft for obvious reasons, though in the end, our intrepid humans somehow overcome forces they should not be able to resist. I've read elsewhere that Campbell insisted on the supremacy of man in the fiction he published in Astounding, and that had a ripple effect on the work published throughout the industry.

"The Storm" by A. E. van Vogt (Astounding) This odd story feels very disjointed to me, comprised of two halves that do not fit together very well. The first half is concerned with the idea of a galactic meteorological society, responsible for predicting the path of "space storms" across inhabited portions of the galaxy much as fronts move across the United States and can be tracked on weather maps. Unfortunately, van Vogt is really talking about storms rather than, say, the path of a gamma ray burst across space. This quibble aside, the members of the weather service are highly respected and valuable members of the culture, revered for their efficiency and honesty. And then one of the members is asked to lie to a visiting dignitary from another civilization, suspected of being a scout in advance of an invasion—if the scout and his ship could be made to disappear, perhaps in the wake of a freak storm, then the protagonist's region may seem too inhospitable for invasion. The second half deals with the repercussions of this plan and includes a female captain of a warship accidentally caught up in the plot and lost when the visitor's ship is lost. Modern readers may find it appalling that such a strong female character is quickly turned into a quivering dependent mess by her "love" for the enemy. It's all rather a narrative mess, filled with implausibility heaped upon implausibility, the hallmark of bad science fiction rather than the kind that this series is intended to celebrate.

"The Proud Robot" by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett ] (Astounding) Another story with humor, "The Proud Robot" doesn't try to make weighty points, but just entertain with an amusing story about a drunken professor and the robot he creates while inebriated. When he comes out of his alcoholic fog, he cannot remember what the robot was invented for, and so the story is a rollicking mystery with absurd characters trying to solve a puzzle from both ends. The solution is clever both for its ingenuity and because the writers had hidden it in plain sight of the readers all along. Unfortunately, the protagonist is a little too one-note for my taste and begins to grate a little bit by the end of the story.

"Symbiotica" by Eric Frank Russell (Astounding) Russell's story of interstellar exploration falls in line with the themes of the first two stories in this collection—human perspective can be dangerous since it has no experience with the truly alien. While Russell focuses on the alien ecology of a new planet as the threat, he also suggests that humans can be as dangerous to one another as any alien can, when stupid and lazy actions by the crew endanger the entire party. The bizarre ecology the ship comes up against is never fully explored, but since the focus is one human frailty, its details really don't matter so much. The final sentence of the story sums up the mood of the whole thing nicely: "When you travel the void, never mind the ship—pick the guys who're going to accompany you in it!"

"The Iron Standard" by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett ] (Astounding) Rounding out what appears to be an unintentional theme for this volume, "The Iron Standard" describes the near-tragedy of a human exploratory ship running into a culture that is not aggressive but frankly couldn't care less about their presence. Kuttner and Moore spend a lot of time setting up the premise—humans' first visit to Venus, only to find a highly regimented civilization that is are resistant to change. Humans represent dramatic change and so are ignored: treated as sentient creatures who must abide by the restrictive laws of Venus and failing that, simply pushed aside. Unfortunately, the humans are running out of food, which the Venusians have in plenty but are unwilling to share without a price, and the humans haven't anything the Venusians value, so they begin to slowly starve. Setting aside the incredible implausibility of a ship being sent out without enough food to last the entire mission (the explanation of which is finessed away unconvincingly), Kuttner and Moore show humans at the ingenious best—finding something they can do or make that they can sell in order to buy the supplies they need. It's a little ironic that the humans fall to tactics that represent arguably the worst side of human nature, and it's unfortunate writing that they discover that there are natives who secretly support the human point-of-view, but it's all told with a humorous tone so such trivialities generally pass by without comment. To damn this story with faint praise, it struck me more as cute than good, primarily because of the implausibility with the supplies—a poorly used plot device.

The Great SF Stories 3 (1941)

I'm finding that writing a review of this anthology series is pretty difficult. Most anthologies include stories that have something in common, whether it be thematic or genre, or even as simple as all of them having the same author. Instead, as noted earlier, this anthology is made up of what two people have decided constitutes the best short stories of a particular year. And in this case, it may as well be a random decision since the parameters of that decision are never defined. There's also the problem of an editor being forced to consider his own material for "Best of" anything, and so the 1941 volume ends up with two Isaac Asimov short stories. Granted, having a "Best of 1941" book without Asimov's "Nightfall" would be nearly criminal, but there is something a little sleazy about Asimov having to comment on his own stories as a selection. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), Asimov's commentaries remain personal remembrances of the story or author in question, sometimes embarrassingly personal, so we are not forced to see Asimov critique his own writing. But why his co-editor, Martin Greenberg, refuses his own commentary on Asimov's works while providing historical and bibliographic information about every other short story escapes me.

And though I have said it about the first two volumes of this series, I have to say it again…not having any Robert Heinlein in these volumes comes close to a crime as well. At least the Heinlein stories the editors would have included had they been able to are listed and commented on.

And then, once you get beyond these flaws…what an amazing collection of great speculative fiction! Leading the class is the aforementioned "Nightfall," selected by the SFWA as the best science fiction short story up to 1968. Asimov's introduction does not mention the apocryphal challenge between he and Heinlein, and a Web search does not give me any hits on it either, such that I wonder where I heard it. Reputedly, John Campbell was in the habit of coming up with ideas for stories and summoning writers to him to let them riff on his thoughts. So he summoned Asimov and Heinlein and told them to write stories where "someone sees the stars for the first time." The results are Heinlein's "Universe" where the viewer greets this first glimpse with wonder while Asimov's viewers in "Nightfall" are terrified. Given that "Universe" was published a month before "Nightfall," I can understand where such a story might have its origin (and ironically, "Universe" would have been included in this volume had Heinlein's works been used). The point of all this is to say that Asimov's story of a civilization in a star cluster, where night only comes every few hundred years, is a masterpiece not only of setting but in its evaluation of human foible. A great deal of the strength of the short story comes from the various reactions and expectations of the characters to what they think is about to come, and the slow build-up of terror among them as what does happen is so much more than what they expect. Part of the tension comes from the dramatic irony of the reader knowing exactly what the night looks like and raising his eyebrows at the idea of the night sky holding as many as "dozens" of other stars. But the real power comes from Asimov not fully exploring the terror, only building it up to a climax and then leaving the effect of revelation to the reader's imagination and the inertia of the story itself with a simple sentence:

The long night had come again.

Another powerful story in the collection is another Hall of Fame recipient, Theodore Sturgeon's "Microcosmic God." There are some echoes of Frankenstein in this short story, as a research scientist gets so wrapped up in the act of scientific discovery that he never fully realizes the consequences of what he has done. However, while Frankenstein deals with the manipulation of a single creature, Sturgeon's story follows James Kidder as he toys with an entire race. And again, though his motives are explicitly pure ("advancing science") there is an implied selfishness as the accolades rain down upon the researcher and not the subject of the research itself. And while Frankenstein is swept up with the terror of the monster, the tension of "Microcosmic God" is far more sedate, especially because it remains an unrevealed threat. After being tortured by Kidder in order to develop invention after invention in, it's far more effective to have them wrap themselves in an impenetrable opaque dome than to act out in any kind of way. As the narrator himself says, "When I think of that I feel frightened."

A sort of counterpoint to Sturgeon's story is "Mechanical Mice" by Maurice A. Hugi (Eric Frank Russell). In it another inventor discovers a way to see into the future and sets about making his fortune out of "inventing" things that he spies with his voyeuristic device. Often though he does not know what it is he is building until it is complete, and such is the case with his latest theft. When the machine he builds sits silently, he asks a friend to aid him in figuring out what it does. Their investigations remain fruitless until a series of strange thefts begin around the city, and the strange device is found to be a "robot queen" that harvests mechanical parts to build workers and drones (and other queens as it turns out) in a what is originally a fairly passive plot to take over the world. The threat is never implied since the story has scenes of thwarted robots summoning fighters to come and defend them and the reader is allowed to glimpse the possibilities of the takeover. The story follows the ensuing hunt for the robots and ends triumphantly, with man conquering the enemy and the common-sense lacking inventor destroying his device.

There are a few humorous stories in the collection that have varying degrees of success. Sturgeon's "Shottle Bop" is ultimately fairly silly and a little trite, while Kuttner and Moore's "A Gnome There Was" is an interesting take on those creatures of long-lived legend. The most successful humorous story is Anthony Boucher's "Snulbug" in which an inventor researches the dark arts and summons a demon to help him make his fortune so he can develop his device to aid man. The humor arises at first from the anti-stereotypical demon that is summoned and how he is put upon by his summoner, but that fades as the inventor fails to take advantage time and again of a newspaper from a day in the future brought to him by the demon. Also funny is Lester del Rey's "Hereafter, Inc" in which a man concerned about how his every action will affect his afterlife finds that it was his patterns that had more effect. But the humor of "Hereafter, Inc." is much thinner, acting as a patina for issues that cause a thoughtful reader to do a thorough self-evaluation.

Really, the only story in this collection that has not aged particularly well is Robert Arthur's "Evolution's End," a ham-handed retelling of the Genesis myth. I think it is the exception that proves the rule, however; the volume is a fine collection of Golden Age speculative fiction well worth reading.

Catching up for 2010: Books

The second in my woeful catch-up posts. Still hoping for better in 2011.

The Great Science Fiction Stories 2 (1940)

Once again the collection of the best of a year runs against the stereotype of what constitutes speculative fiction. Beautiful women and fast spaceships need not apply, as this collection of authors use speculative fiction to explore (pardon the cliché) the human condition from unearthly points of view. Perhaps my favorite story in the collection, "It" by Theodore Sturgeon, leans more towards horror and appears to set up the tropes that later lesser horror works follow.I was also pleased to finally read the story that is the inspiration for perhaps my favorite SF film: "Farewell to the Master" is a poignantly different story from the one told in The Day the Earth Stood Still but is still very strong and readable today.

One of the things I find most interesting is the authors of whom I had never heard before picking up the collection—Willard Hawkins, Robert Arthur, Oscar Friend, and the author of "Master," Harry Bates. Some of these authors are so obscure that Asimov's generally obsequious commentaries are short as he recounts that he doesn't really have any memories of the author in question at all. Such lack of recollection is a pleasing divergence from his longer commentaries. And still, it would be lovely if those introductions, either by Asimov or co-editor Martin Greenberg, told us how the story being introduced made the cut, what makes them the best of that year.

One mystery is solved, left over from the first volume: Heinlein's stories are not included because "arrangements for their use could not be made." I really would like to find an account of this circumstance, since Greatest SF Stories follows this announcement by pointing the reader to Heinlein's own collection, The Past Through Tomorrow, published over a decade earlier. I can't help but feel that Asimov's commentary in the previous volume soured the opportunity to include Heinlein in future volumes.

By and large this is a very good read with no real clunkers. The stories may not have aged very well in some cases—the humor sometimes appears trite and a little sophomoric on occasion—but any reader really interested in the history of the genre should be fascinated by the collection of known and unknown.

The Best of Leigh Brackett

In the mid-70s, Ballantine published what they referred to as the Classic Library of Science Fiction, an assortment of nearly 20 collections of the best of various writers. Today we know very little about these authors beyond the current reprinting work being taken on by Planet Stories/Paizo Publishing. I felt if I was going to increase my knowledge with the best of various years, I could also look at the best of specific authors, including some whose names I know but about whose work I know very little. There's even one author collected, Raymond Z. Gallun, about whom I know absolutely nothing. The first volume of this series that I was able to find contains the best work of Leigh Brackett, introduced by her husband Edmond Hamilton )which seems only fair since Brackett introduces the volume about Hamilton).

I already had a feel for Brackett because of the aforementioned reprints from Planet Stories, and the stories in this volume are mostly the same kind of thing. I've had trouble in other blog entries explaining the odd feeling I get from most of Brackett's writing, but I discovered that she has done a good job of describing it herself in her own "The Jewel of Bas":

He wasn't a human, attached to a normal human world. He moved in a strange land of gods and demons, here everything was as mad as a drunkard's nightmare, and [his wife] was the only thing that held him at all to the memory of a life wherein men and women fought and laughed and loved.

I've speculated before that Brackett's work owes more than a little debt to the Weird Tales pulps, using settings and situations where the mortal characters can't begin to know the ancient and mysterious powers which they go up against. And that inability to know is reflected in the narration, whereby the reader doesn't really get to fully understand the events and characters all around him. Despite the difficulty that such not-knowing would present to the enjoyment of the stories, Brackett shows her craft extremely well. Her pieces are moody and atmospheric, sucking the reader in just as they do the protagonists, wrapping things up in auras of weird until the protagonist and reader feel lucky to survive at the end.

One of the more accessible stories, "The Woman from Altair" still reflects the awesome ignorance humans have about what is Out There. In this story, the scion of the leading spacefaring and industrialist family returns to Earth with a bride from a previously undiscovered planet, which shocks not only his family but all of Earth. Tragedy strikes his family again and again, and his overlooked brother tries to figure out what is happening, only to discover just how poorly humans actually try to understand. In this way, "The Woman from Altair" presages Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and the tragic consequences of mistakenly believing that one can understand an alien culture in the matter of a few days (or even years, in the case of Russell).

Of course there is also an Eric John Stark story, "Enchantress of Venus", which just more firmly places Stark in my mind as one of the great pulp heroes in the genre, which unfortunately no one remembers any more beyond Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.

By and large there is not a single miscue in this collection, but while the stories are good and passionately told, it is still slow going because the very weirdness of them impedes moving fast. I would recommend this book to the reader with, again, an interest in the history of the genre and the time to appreciate that history as well as the changes in it as it has evolved over the last century.

Surface Detail

I think it may be generally said that Iain Banks's science fiction novels are filled with big ideas, playing around with the tropes and expectations of space opera. The sticking point is that often those big ideas are just tossed out for inspection and never really developed beyond the epiphanic "that's cool" stage. Banks's earlier novels made up for this lack of development with fascinating characters and settings and skilled storytelling, especially when it comes to narration. Over time, either Banks has begun to rely too much on the "gee whiz" factor or my palate has begun desensitized to what he does, perhaps because other writers have begun to borrow from him. Surface Detail falls neatly into this description: the general idea is just cooler than cool, but the story that is told around it seems somewhat underdeveloped, leaving the feeling that something is lacking, especially in comparison to other Banks works.

Banks's Culture novels, the series of which Surface Detail is the latest entry, already posits the Singularity having occurred, and AIs being given as much power and responsibility as people. The human body is infinitely adaptable and we have relations with several other galactic civilizations. Banks merrily pokes fun at the monolith of galactic culture—the touchstone of early space opera was that galactic empires were serious and deadly stuff, something awesome to aspire to, Banks however posits that such cultures would have foibles and idiosyncrasies, just more of them and probably to a greater scale than what exists in national politics today. Fortunately, Banks remains somewhat human-centric, since our own Culture's primary foible seems to be the inability to take itself (or anything for that matter) very seriously, and thus is both the object of both admiration and scorn of other galactic powers.

Within this setting, Surface Detail ponders the now-accepted Singularity trope of uploading the entire personality and memory of individuals into massive simulations. The technology of Banks's future is so advanced that such downloading (and also the uploading of personalities into new bodies) is de rigeur, and those societies that believe in hell now have the ability to create electronic simulations of it to torment the immortal reproductions of its citizens. The more liberal-minded societies find such a practice utterly immoral and a galactic war breaks out over the practice and belief in hell. Fortunately, the parties involved are advanced enough to not have a Real war, and instead have a Virtual one, using the same personality download technology to use soldiers to fight over and over in battles with ultimate victory determining the continued existence of these hells.

It being Banks, there are side-stories, filled with bizarre personalities but with mostly tangential ties to the idea of a war for hell. Unfortunately those stories have more development than the central war story. Those side stories further define and explicate the galactic milieu and the societies within it, and upon recollection, I realize that Surface Detail and indeed a lot of Banks's later SF, can be read as a travelogue to his future rather than wrestling with the ideas he constantly throws out to his readers.

Nonetheless, Surface Detail is fun and has some hysterically black comic moments, as well as more "gee whiz" moments than most authors create in a lifetime. It is for those big ideas that I've come to read Banks, as well as the characters that do get most fully fleshed out. Banks is also a master of the small scene: interaction between individuals is usually handled quite craftily and enjoyably. You just can't come to Banks and expect a straight line to anywhere.

Best Served Cold

I've written in the past about Joe Abercrombie's genre-bending in his First Law trilogy. Best Served Cold is a standalone novel set in the same world as the First Law, and the genre-bending continues. The expectations most readers have for epic fantasy are torn to shreds by Best Served Cold, as Abercrombie inserts real people into a story usually told about archetypes of high moral character.

Monzcarro Murcatto has risen from a lowly farmer to the leadership of the best mercenary army in her world, the Thousand Swords. Most of her service has been to Duke Orso as he tries to unite separate countries into a single empire, but eventually Orso realizes that Monza is a greater hero to his people than he ever will be. So he attempts to assassinate her by throwing her, with her brother, over the side of a mountain. While her brother dies, Monza survives and, of course desire revenge upon the Duke and those who helped him.

What follows is a story that sets up the expectations of the epic revenge story, with duels and precise killings of the co-conspirators, but ends up being a bloody free-for-all that changes the history of that part of Abercrombie's world. None of the people that Monza hires are particularly trustworthy and none of them are so perfect at their tasks that they are automatically danger-free. And lots of people dies, lots and lots. Like his earlier First Law story, most of the characters in Best Served Cold are not very likable, though they are fully realized and utterly believable. In fact, the most likable, trustworthy character—ironically named Friendly—is a mass murderer who would prefer to be back in prison, where the world is orderly, rather than the chaos of the outside world.

The story is so readable exactly because we want to see how the dysfunctional band works to enact their revenge, despite growing tensions between them all. And Abercrombie's plot gives them opportunity after opportunity to practice their various crafts as well as prove they can be functional. Abercrombie also offers plot twists galore as new characters are introduced who influence the decisions and plots of Monza's band of killers. And did I mention that lots of people die, in horrific realistic fashion? Eventually battles are fought, and Monza uses them to work out her revenge fantasies. The action is breakneck and relentless and just a whole lot of fun.

Best Served Cold is one of my favorite books of this past year. I look forward to the new series Abercrombie is starting. I cannot recommend this book enough, though you may hate me for it while you just gape at the events that Abercrombie relates.

The Great Science Fiction Stories 1 (1939)

Poking around the Internet Science Fiction Database a few weeks ago, trying to determine where I could find a reputedly classic short story, I stumbled upon a series of anthologies that began their print run in 1979. Edited by Martin Greenberg and Isaac Asimov, the 23 volumes of this series set out upon the enormous task of reviewing the short science fiction for each year from 1939 to 1964, pick the twenty or so best stories and reprint them. For someone like me who readily admits to not having a good knowledge of the works of the early golden age of science fiction, such a series would be a treasure trove. And so, again applying my Internet skills, I was able to find a copy of the first volume, and excitedly settled in for a good read.

To be blunt, it turned out to be a mixed bag. On the one hand, most of the stories were at least interesting, but some of them just have not aged well. As you might imagine, stories written for a popular audience in the 30s that deal with racial stereotypes and sexual dynamics sometimes can make a modern reader flinch. One such story was H. L. Gold's "Trouble with Water" where the Jewish stereotype is thick and heavy, and the humor that uses the stereotypes as a foundation just misses in the current day. This is not to say that the premise isn't interesting, that there are water sprites that become magically offended when slighted; the result is a broad slapstick story of a man suddenly no longer able to touch water and the effects of such a curse. Making the lead character a sorely put-upon Jew might well have been funny in the 30s, but the stereotype rankles now. Nonetheless, that very uncomfortableness provides an interesting historical touchpoint that provides some worth to the story's selection.

But the selection process itself is fairly opaque. While Greenberg writes a short biographical introduction to each story, what would have been more interesting, at least to this reader, is some conversation about why the story made the cut as one of the best of the year. While the biographies are interesting, they do very little to place the story into a context and describe what makes them stand out. Asimov also contributes a paragraph or so to each introduction, usually a description of Asimov's relationship or interaction with the author. Unfortunately, those reminiscences are somewhat over the top, making it appear that Asimov is bending over backwards to not say anything untoward about the authors. Strangely, the only author who doesn't get the kid-glove treatment is Robert Heinlein, for whom Asimov tells the story of Heinlein giving the young Asimov his first (and apparently only) alcoholic drink. Asimov's tone when talking about Heinlein is, to put it mildly, ambivalent and easily read as downright snarky.

But these are just minor distractions, usually less than a single page each, from the usually fascinating stories that were selected. I was delighted to find authors represented that I had never heard of before and others of whom I had read only one or two stories. All told, before picking up the book, I had only read three of the stories before and was delighted to read them again.

The collection starts off strongly with Otto Binder (writing as Eando Binder) and "I, Robot." Fans of The Outer Limits know this story as the basis for an episode starring Leonard Nimoy about a robot accused of murdering his maker. While the TV episode focuses on the human reaction to the "murder," the original short story is actually a journal entry from the accused robot, describing not only what actually happened but the robot's perspective on the people pursuing him. The story clearly evokes the classic Frankenstein but offers a modern twist on it, describing as it does the maturity of a created mechanical brain rather than the reawakening of a human one.

Another powerful story is Lester del Rey's "The Day is Done" describing the heartache and loneliness of the last Neanderthal and his hopeless fight against the evolutionarily advanced Cro-magnons that see him as an oddity or pet. The story cheats a little, giving the Neanderthal a much stronger narrative voice than an actual one—that his conversation sounds like the stereotypical caveman talk is no end of amusement for the village of Cro-magnons that harbor him—but the story that he tells is evocative and emotional in ways that I didn't expect as I began reading it. Similarly evocative is Joseph Kelleam's "Rust," a story about the end of life on Earth.

There are also stories that attempt to couch humor in their speculative fiction settings, such as L. Sprague de Camp's "The Gnarly Man," where an anthropologist makes an astonishing discovery living amongst people as a carnival freak. As may be expected, it's the humans who end up appearing freakish by the end. Henry Kuttner's "The Misguided Rainbow" tells the story of a novice angel who places a halo on a less than saintly man, and follows that man as he is doomed to only do good, making his career as a sales executive appear tenuous.

The anthology also contains a powerful hard science fiction story, "Heavy Planet" by Milton Rothman. On a planet with atmospheric pressure thousands of times greater than Earth's and with gravity also far greater than expected, a race of humanoids long for the stars but are unable to achieve chemical rocketry because the physics of their own world will not allow it. Instead, they watch the skies for visitors in the hopes of adapting an alien technology to their needs.

As I read, I noticed a pattern that I find fascinating, if only in a cultural sense. Without doubt, the stereotype of the science fiction of the 30s is the bug-eyed monster carrying away the damsel in distress, or spaceships launching deadly rays at each other, locked in a stellar battle to the death. But none of the stories in this collection live up to the stereotypes; in fact spaceships appear only four times in the twenty stories and aliens only three times. But what the stories generally do have in common is a single "what if" idea and extrapolation of the logical effects if that idea were to come to pass. This, you'll note, is a generally solid though generic definition of what science fiction is anyway. I suspect that the stereotypical stories did exist but somehow didn't make the cut of the twenty best. The closest the anthology comes to the stereotype is A. E. van Vogt's "Black Destroyer," an often reprinted story of a first contact with a race immeasurably superior to men physically but unable to handle the facile human mind and the technologies it controls.

The end result is a fascinating time capsule of a period few readers know about today. There are some disappointments but nothing screechingly bad. And there is some powerful and entertaining writing along the way. I think this book is worth the effort for a search if you are curious about the history of the genre.

(An afterword of sorts—I found the short story I was originally searching for in volume 2 of this series, and hopefully it will be arriving soon. This piqued my curiosity, and I have actually read through the selections for each of the 25 volumes. Two things really jumped out at me as I skimmed the titles—first, the authors included are the luminaries of the genre. And second, the one name that is consistently missing in the series after volume 1 is Robert Heinlein. I know I am biased, but I can't imagine that from 1940 to 1964, not once did a Heinlein short story crack the top 20 in a year. I only can think of two reasons why they aren't included—either there were copyright issues or Heinlein was so unhappy with Asimov's description of him that he refused to permit the use of any more of his work. The lack of Heinlein makes me question the selection process that much more, and though I had originally been considering more volumes of the series, I'm not so sure any more. Given that I already own every Heinlein short story there is, I wouldn't be missing anything, but I remain torn regarding the genuineness of the selections. Of course, if I read more of them, they'll be noted here.)