THE MARATHON PHOTOGRAPH AND OTHER STORIES (1986) by Clifford D. Simak

This time out, we have a single author collection of short fiction by one of my favourite authors, Clifford D. Simak, in which all of the stories have an underlying thematic link dealing with the mysterious paradox of time. It's quite a short collection, at only 171 pages, and only four stories (making it a relatively quick and easy read compared to most of the modern brick-sized entities masquerading as books). But one of those stories is a long novella, and there are also two novelettes and a single short story making up the rest of the book. And what stories they are.

TITLE: THE MARATHON PHOTOGRAPH AND OTHER STORIES
AUTHOR: Clifford D. Simak
EDITOR: Francis Lyall
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Single Author Collection
FORMAT: Hardback, 171 pages
PUBLISHER: Severn House (SH), London, 1986
ISBN: 0 7278 1221 1

• The Introduction
• "The Birch Clump Cylinder" (from Stellar #1, edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey, Ballantine, 1974)
• "The Whistling Well" (from Dark Forces), edited by Kirby McCauley, Viking, 1980
• "The Marathon Photograph" (from Threads of Time), edited by Robert Silverberg, Nelson, 1974
• "The Grotto Of The Dancing Deer" (from Analog, April 1980)

The stories are all quite long. Even the shortest, "The Grotto of the Dancing Deer", comes in at just over twenty-one pages. This story is a good one, first published in Analog back in April 1980, and winning the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards for that year. It's a lovely story, and one which I recall enjoying a lot when I first read it twenty or so years ago.

"The Marathon Photograph" at seventy pages, is the longest story in the collection. I read this one many years ago on its original publication in Threads of Time, edited by Robert Silverberg (1974). I loved it then, and still do. It's my favourite of the four stories in this collection.

The other stories in the collection, "The Birch Clump Cylinder" and "The Whistling Well", are two that I haven't read before. From what I've read of both stories so far, I'm quite sure that I'll enjoy them just as must as I did the other two.

Simak had his first SF story published in Astounding way back in 1931 ("World of the Red Sun"), and most of my favourite Simak short fiction came from much earlier in his career - "The World of the Red Sun" (1931), "Sunspot Purge" (1940), "Beachhead" aka "You'll Never Go Home Again" (1951), "The Trouble with Ants" (1951), "Small Deer" (1965), and a few others - and I haven't read a lot of his later stuff. By contrast, the stories in this collection are all from quite late in Simak's career (he died in 1988, at the age of 83), the earliest two being written when he was almost 70, and the other two during his mid-70's.

It'll be interesting to compare and contrast with his earlier material. "The Marathon Photograph" already rates as one of my favourite Simak tales, if not my overall favourite.

Definitely a nice little collection, from a pretty much forgotten (except by the oldies) and greatly underappreciated author.

BUG-EYED MONSTERS edited by Anthony Cheetham

TITLE: BUG-EYED MONSTERS
EDITED BY: Anthony Cheetham
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
FORMAT: Hardback, 280 pages
PUBLISHER: Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1972.
ISBN: 0 283 97864 3

CONTENTS:

• Introduction by Anthony Cheetham
• "Invasion from Mars" by Howard Koch (with Orson Welles) - 1938 radio adaptation of War of the Worlds, CBS, October 30, 1938
• "Not Only Dead Men" by A. E. Van Vogt (1942) (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1942)
• "Arena" by Fredric Brown (1944) (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1944)
• "Surface Tension" by James Blish (Galaxy, August 1952)
• "The Deserter" by William Tenn (1953) (reprinted from Star Science Fiction Stories, edited by Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, February 1953)
• "Mother" by Philip José Farmer (1953) (Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1953)
• "Stranger Station" by Damon Knight (1956) (Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1956)
• "Greenslaves" by Frank Herbert (1965) (Amazing, March 1965)
• "Balanced Ecology" by James H. Schmitz (1967) (Analog, March 1965)
• "The Dance of the Changer & Three" by Terry Carr (1968) (reprinted from The Farthest Reaches, edited by Joseph Elder, Trident 1968)

This is a nice little anthology, containing ten stories (more accurately NINE stories and one radio play adaptation) spanning thirty years 1938-1968. It is edited by Anthony Cheetham, with whom I am totally unfamiliar. According to Cheetham's interesting little introduction, the title of the book is a gentle, fun jibe at the old, stereotypical "bug-eyed monster" of the pulps. However the ten stories in the anthology are of an altogether higher quality than those old yarns in the pulps, almost a "rehabilitation" of the old bug-eyed monster.

There's quite a mix in this anthology. We start off with one which is very apt, given the title of the anthology. Howard Koch's (and Orson Welles's) classic 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's seminal 1898 interplanetary invasion novel War of the Worlds. It first appeared in book form in the anthology Invasion from Mars), edited by Orson Welles (Dell, 1949). The Martian invaders are probably the original archetype for all the B.E.M.s that came afterwards, so this one is as good a place to start as any. I've read it before in a number of publications, and it's always nice to revisit it.

As for the other nine stories, as usual, there are a few that I'm familiar with, and a few that I'm not. Fredric Brown's classic Arena and James Blish's Surface Tension are the two that I remember best. Both have always been favourites of mine. Frank Herbert's Greenslaves is another one that I recall liking, although my memory is a bit fuzzier on the details of that one. I have very vague memories about encountering the Van Vogt, Knight, Tenn and Carr stories at some point in the distant past, but don't recall anything about them except the briefest details. I don't recall ever reading either the Farmer or Schmitz stories before.

I may not know (or recall) a few of the stories, but with the exception of Koch, the other nine authors in the anthology are all VERY familiar to me. No obscure writers here, although I must admit that I'm much more familiar with Terry Carr as one of my favourite anthologists, rather than as an author. Overall, this looks like a good one. With those names in it, how could it not be? I think I'm going to really enjoy reading BUG-EYED MONSTERS. :)