6 GREAT SHORT NOVELS OF SCIENCE FICTION (1954) edited by Groff Conklin

For this post, we have an anthology, this one from 1954. It's another from one of the old dependables and one of my own personal favourite anthologists, Groff Conklin.

This anthology is a paperback, published by Dell, one of their Dell First Edition range, number D9, to be precise. It's billed as "six short novels by six masters of imaginative storytelling". One of the six is a long novella (98 pages), and the other five are all short novellas, and one long novelette, spanning 49-58 pages in length, from shortest story to longest.

 

TITLE: 6 GREAT SHORT NOVELS OF SCIENCE FICTION
EDITED BY: Groff Conklin
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
FORMAT: Paperback, 384 pages
PUBLISHER: Dell First Edition, New York, 1954.

CONTENTS (6 Stories)

• Introduction by Groff Conklin
• "The Blast" by Stuart Cloete (novella, Collier's, April 1946)
• "Coventry" by Robert A. Heinlein (novella, Astounding Science Fiction, July 1940)
• "The Other World" by Murray Leinster (novella, Startling Stories, November 1949)
• "Barrier" by Anthony Boucher (novella, Astounding Science Fiction, September 1942)
• "Surface Tension" by James Blish (novelette, Galaxy, August 1952)
• "Maturity" by Theodore Sturgeon (novella, Astounding Science Fiction, February 1947)

The first story, "The Blast", is a bit of an oddity, as it's by a writer that I've never heard of, Stuart Cloete, and it didn't even appear in one of the science fiction magazines, but rather in an April 1946 edition of Collier's, one of the big mass market, general magazines, which was published in the US between 1888 and 1957.

The other five stories are all from science fiction magazines, Astounding, Galaxy and Startling Stories, and all spanning the years 1940-1952. I'm familiar with three of them (Leinster, Boucher and Blish), and they're old favourites of mine, although it's many years since I've read any of them. The titles of the Heinlein and Sturgeon stories vaguely ring a bell for me, so I may or may not have read them at some point in distant past, but I recall absolutely nothing about them.

Quite an interesting anthology of stories. Should be fun reading this one.

A New Dawn: The Complete Don A. Stuart Stories (2003)

This time out, I'm taking a brief look at one of the high-quality NESFA Press collections of SF author short fiction. This one contains all of John W. Campbell, Jr's short fiction written under his "Don A. Stuart" pseudonym, plus a couple of previously unpublished (in book form) articles also written by Campbell under the Stuart handle. The collection starts off with an excellent introduction, "The Man Who Lost the Sea", written by Barry N. Malzberg, giving a short but fascinating examination of Campbell's career. This is followed by sixteen stories, and finishes off with the two essays.

TITLE: A NEW DAWN: THE COMPLETE DON A.STUART STORIES
AUTHOR: John W. Campbell, Jr.
EDITED BY: James A. Mann
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Author Collection
DUSTJACKET ART: Bob Eggleton
FORMAT: Hardback, 464 pages
PUBLISHER: NESFA Press, US, 2003
ISBN: 1-886778-15-9

CONTENTS (16 Stories, 2 Articles):

• Introduction: "The Man Who Lost the Sea" (2002) by Barry N. Malzberg
• "Twilight" (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1934, short story)
• "Atomic Power" (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1934, short story)
• "The Machine" (Astounding Science Fiction, February 1935, short story, Machine series #1)
• "The Invaders" (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1935, novelette, Machine series #2)
• "Rebellion" (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1935, short story, Machine series #3)
• "Blindness" (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1935, short story)
• "The Escape" (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1935, novelette)
• "Night" (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1935, novelette)
• "Elimination" (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1936, short story)
• "Frictional Losses" (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1936, novelette)
• "Forgetfulness" (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1937, novelette)
• "Out of Night" (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1937, novelette, Aesir series #1)
• "Cloak of Aesir" (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1939, novelette, Aesir series #2)
• "Dead Knowledge" (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1938, novelette)
• "Who Goes There?" (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1938, novelette)
• "The Elder Gods" (Unknown, October 1939, novella)
• "Strange Worlds" (Unknown, April 1939, article)
• "Wouldst Write, Wee One?" (Scienti-Snaps, Vol.3 No.1, February 1940, article)

The stories appear in chronological order, in order of dates of publication, with the exception of the three stories in the Invaders sequence and the two Aesir stories, which have all been re-ordered so they appear in their own correct internal sequence.

Campbell, especially the Don A. Stuart alter ego, was one of my favourite SF writers of the 1930s. Under his own name, he competed with E. E. "Doc" Smith, writing stories of superscience (although Campbell was a MUCH better writer than Smith), but under the Stuart pseudonym, he wrote stories that were truly special, dark, moody, decadent, and more akin to the darker tales of H. G. Wells and other classic scientific romance authors than anything hitherto seen in the pulps.

Sure, there were a few other writers in that era who did the dark, moody and decadent thing pretty darned good - Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, and Henry Kuttner, to name but a few - but these authors mostly wrote SF&F of a completely different, more fantasy-oriented flavour. In my opinion, Campbell, with the exception of maybe Jack Williamson, who also was writing some similarly dark, moody SF during that period, had no real direct competition in science fiction at that time.

When I was a kid (early-mid teens), I first encountered Campbell's short fiction in various collections and anthologies that I checked out of local libraries. Ironically, I encountered the superior Don A. Stuart tales years before I ever read any of Campbell's Superscience stories. "Night" was the first one, in the Sam Moskowitz-edited anthology Microcosmic God. That story had a huge and formative impact on me as a reader, and I was delighted to find out a year or two later that it was actually a sequel to another excellent story, "Twilight".

After I read "Night", I eagerly hunted down any other Campbell short stories that I could find. Some of them were just as good as "Night", including the aforementioned "Twilight" and other tales such as "Forgetfulness", the two Aesir stories "Out of Night" and "The Cloak of Aesir", and the classic "Who Goes There?". These all became huge favourites of mine during my teenage years. "Dead Knowledge", "Blindness" and the Machine trilogy of stories were all also very good. It's been many years since I've read most of these stories, so it's going to be fun revisiting them.

When Campbell took over at Astounding as The Editor, and kick-started the Golden Age which totally reshaped SF, he became one of the biggest and most important figures in the history of the genre. But, at the same time, we also lost potentially one of the genre's greatest writers, something that I, personally, regret quite a lot. We can only imagine how good he might have become, what other amazing stories he might've written, if he hadn't given up writing to concentrate fully on being the editor of Astounding.

But, at least, in this excellent collection, he has left behind some of the greatest SF stories not only of the 1930's, but indeed any other era. This is one of my favourite SF author short fiction collections, and definitely recommended reading.

THE RED PERI (1952) by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Last time out, I had a look at one of the oldest and most valuable SF books in my collection, the original 1949 Fantasy Press US 1st Edition hardcover of A Martian Odyssey and Others, which contained a dozen of the best pieces of short fiction written by classic 1930's SF author Stanley G. Weinbaum. Now I'm going to take a look at a second Weinbaum short fiction collection, The Red Peri, another US 1st Edition hardcover, also published by Fantasy Press, in 1952.

TITLE: THE RED PERI
AUTHOR: Stanley G. Weinbaum
COVER ARTIST: John T. Brooks
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Single-Author Collection
FORMAT: Hardback (with dustjacket), US 1st Edition, 270 pages
PUBLISHER: Fantasy Press, Reading, Pennsylvania, US, 1952.

Contents (8 stories):

• "The Red Peri" (novella, Astounding Stories, November 1935)
• "Proteus Island" (novella, Astounding Stories, August 1936)
• "Flight on Titan" (novelette, Astounding Stories, January 1935)
• "Smothered Seas" (novelette, Astounding Stories, January 1936)
• "Redemption Cairn" (novelette, Astounding Stories, March 1936)
• "The Brink of Infinity" (short story, Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1936)
• "Shifting Seas" (novelette, Amazing Stories, April 1937)
• "Revolution of 1950" (novella, Amazing Stories, October-November 1938)

This one can be regarded as the companion collection to the earlier A Martian Odyssey and Others, and between them, they contain all but a couple of Weinbaum's entire short fiction output. There are fewer stories in this one - eight as opposed to twelve - but there are three novellas, four novelettes and only one short story in The Red Peri, whereas A Martian Odyssey and Others contained no novellas, eight novelettes and four short stories.

It's been a long, long time since I read this one, and my memories are understandably hazy. I do remember preferring A Martian Odyssey and Others to The Red Peri, as the earlier collection did contain more of Weinbaum's "better" stories. But this collection also contains several of his best longer-form stories. I distinctly remember enjoying both "The Red Peri" and "Proteus Island", although my memories of the other stories range from extremely vague to non-existent.

Like A Martian Odyssey and Others, this 1st US hardcover edition of The Red Peri comes with the original dustjacket, showcasing some very nice art by John T. Brooks. As with the earlier collection, the dustjacket of this one is in remarkably good condition considering its age. A little frayed around the outside, but otherwise pretty intact.

Overall, The Red Peri is a very nice collection, and in great condition, considering the fact that it's almost sixty-five years old and has been around the block a bit. Along with A Martian Odyssey and Others, it's definitely one of the real treasures in my SF book collection.

A MARTIAN ODYSSEY AND OTHERS (1949) by Stanley G. Weinbaum

This time out, I'm going to take a brief look at one of the oldest and most valuable SF books in my collection, the earliest collection of short fiction by classic 1930's SF author Stanley G. Weinbaum. I bought this book a long time ago from a UK used book dealer, must've been thirty-five years ago or more, way back when I was just becoming an obsessive book collector for the first time. It actually came as part of Weinbaum two-book set by the same publisher, Fantasy Press, the other book being The Red Peri, another collection of Weinbaum's short fiction, which will also be the subject of the blog post after this one.

TITLE: A MARTIAN ODYSSEY AND OTHERS
AUTHOR: Stanley G. Weinbaum
COVER ARTIST: A. J. Donnell
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Single-Author Collection
FORMAT: Hardback (with dustjacket), US 1st Edition, 289 pages
PUBLISHER: Fantasy Press, Reading, Pennsylvania, US, 1949.

Contents (12 stories):

• "A Martian Odyssey" (novelette, Wonder Stories, July 1934)
• "Valley of Dreams" (novelette, Wonder Stories, November 1934)
• "The Adaptive Ultimate" (novelette, Astounding Stories, November 1935)
• "The Mad Moon" (novelette, Astounding Stories, December 1935)
• "The Worlds of If" (short story, Wonder Stories, August 1935)
• "The Ideal" (novelette, Wonder Stories, September 1935)
• "The Point of View" (short story, Wonder Stories, February 1936)
• "Pygmalion's Spectacles" (short story, Wonder Stories, June 1935)
• "Parasite Planet" (novelette, Astounding Stories, February 1935)
• "The Lotus Eaters" (novelette, Astounding Stories, April 1935)
• "The Planet of Doubt" (novelette, Astounding Stories, October 1935)
• "The Circle of Zero" (short story, Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1936)

This collection is notable for containing Weinbaum's most famous short story, "A Martian Odyssey" and its sequel, "Valley of Dreams". There are also a few other good ones, including "Parasite Planet" and its sequel "The Lotus Eaters", "The Mad Moon", "The Worlds of If" and "The Adaptive Ultimate". "The Adaptive Ultimate" has also been (if you'll pardon the pun) adapted to film, television and radio a number of times over the years.

Overall, A Martian Odyssey and Others contains most of the best of Weinbaum's short fiction, and, combined with the eight stories in The Red Peri contains almost all of the short fiction that Weinbaum wrote, with the exception of a handful of stories.

The dustjacket is in pretty good condition, considering its age, showcasing some lovely artwork by A. J. Donnell. As an aside, the edition that I have also bears a very interesting hand-written inscription/dedication on the front inside page. The inscription goes as follows:

"FROM SCIENTI-CLAUS 1955
FOR ALF GREGORY'S HG WELLSIANS
IN RESPECT OF THE MEMORY
OF THE GREATEST*
OF THEM ALL.

*HGW: 1886-1946"

It's an extremely sobering thought that, at the publication date of this book (1949), the Great Man himself (H.G. Wells) had only been dead a mere three years. :(

It looks like this book was bought as a Christmas gift for someone, and this dedication is a tribute to a H.G. Wells fan group active in the UK, possibly in the late-1940s and the 1950s. At least that's the assumption that I'm making from this. I know that it's a long shot, as we're talking more than sixty years ago here, and this group may or may not have been anything more than a small local fan group. But does anybody out there have any information on an old UK-based SF/HG Wells fan group by the name of ALF GREGORY'S HG WELLSIANS? If so, I'd be very appreciative if you'd let me know the details.

CLASSIC SCIENCE FICTION - THE FIRST GOLDEN AGE edited by Terry Carr

Here is yet another SF anthology edited by one of my favourite SF anthologists, Terry Carr. It's a nice, beefy one this time, at 445 pages, with twelve stories, plus an introduction by Carr.

Do NOT skip the Introduction. It is a fascinating, lengthy, detailed 17-page thesis by Carr, which serves as an excellent historical background to the First Golden Age of Science Fiction. This one is an absolute must for anyone, like myself, who is as much a student of the history of science fiction as I am a fan of the literature itself.

TITLE: CLASSIC SCIENCE FICTION - THE FIRST GOLDEN AGE
EDITED BY: Terry Carr
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
PUBLISHER: Robson Books Ltd., London, 1979
FORMAT: Hardback, 1st Edition, 445 pages
ISBN: 0-86051-070-0

CONTENTS:

• Introduction by Terry Carr
• "The Smallest God" by Lester del Rey (Astounding Science Fiction, January 1940)
• "Into the Darkness" by Ross Rocklynne (Astonishing Stories, June 1940)
• "Vault of the Beast" by A. E. van Vogt (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1940)
• "The Mechanical Mice" by Eric Frank Russell (Astounding Science Fiction, January 1941)
• "-And He Built a Crooked House-" by Robert A Heinlein (Astounding Science Fiction, February 1941)
• "Microcosmic God" by Theodore Sturgeon (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1941)
• "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov (Astounding Science Fiction, September 1941)
• "By His Bootstraps" by Robert A. Heinlein (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1941)
• "Child of the Green Light" by Leigh Brackett (Super Science Stories, February 1942)
• "Victory Unintentional" by Isaac Asimov (Super Science Stories, August 1942)
• "The Twonky" by Henry Kuttner (Astounding Science Fiction, September 1942)
• "Storm Warning" by Donald A. Wollheim (Future Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1942)

Intriguingly, and in addition to the fantastic main Introduction, each of the twelve stories has its own multi-page introduction, each of which which gives detailed background information on the author and the story itself. How I wish that every anthology would do this. And then there are the twelve stories themselves. And what stories they are.

This anthology contains some of the greatest short stories from the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and I'm familiar with most, but not all, of them, as they've appeared in other anthologies or single-author collections. Just looking at the roll-call of authors, it's like a who's-who of the biggest SF names from that era. Of course, eight of the twelve stories are from Astounding Science Fiction, which is unsurprising, as it was by far the biggest SF magazine of the Golden Age.

We have two of the best of the early stories written by Isaac Asimov, as well as one of the best and probably the most famous story written by Henry Kuttner, and likewise absolute gems by Eric Frank Russell, Theodore Sturgeon and Lester del Rey. I've always been a huge fan of Leigh Brackett, and her story "Child of the Green Light" is also a cracker. Even the two stories that I was totally unfamiliar with, "Storm Warning" by Donald A. Wollheim and "Into the Darkness" by Ross Rocklynne, are excellent stories.

A. E. van Vogt's story "Vault of the Beast" easily ranks up there alongside "Black Destroyer", "The Monster" and "Dormant", as one of my all-time favourite van Vogt short tales. And the two Robert A. Heinlein short stories, "By His Bootstraps" and "-And He Built a Crooked House-", well, what superlatives can I heap upon them other than to say that they are two of the greatest SF short stories ever written?

As this is an older book, and has been out of print for a number of years, I guess anyone looking for a copy will have to haunt the second-hand/used books stores. And if you spot one, snap it up right away! This is a fantastic anthology of Golden Age SF short fiction. I enjoyed every single story, which is something that I rarely say about most anthologies, as there are usually at least one or two stories which aren't as good as the rest.

Terry Carr very rarely disappointed with his anthologies, and with this one, he came up with the goods yet again. This is an absolute gem of an anthology, and I'd recommend it without any hesitation to all fans of Golden Age SF.

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.

STORIES FOR TOMORROW (1954) edited by William Sloane

I've got an interesting anthology in front of me at the moment. Actually, I've got two different editions of it. Firstly an original US 1st Edition hardback, which I bought from a dealer on Amazon. This is an ex-library copy, and came without a dustcover, otherwise the book itself is in excellent condition. The other edition is the UK 1st Edition hardback, complete with dustjacket (pictured here), which has slightly different contents to the US Edition.

The US edition first...

TITLE: STORIES FOR TOMORROW
EDITED BY: William Sloane
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
FORMAT: Hardback, 628 pages
PUBLISHER: Funk & Wagnalls, US, 1954

CONTENTS LISTING:

About This Book by William Sloane

PART I: THE HUMAN HEART

• "The Wilderness" by Ray Bradbury (Today, April 6th 1952, revised for Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1952)
• "Starbride" by Anthony Boucher (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1951)
• "Second Childhood" by Clifford D. Simak (Galaxy, Feb 1951)
• "Homeland" by Mari Wolf (first published as "The Statue", If Magazine, January 1953)
• "Let Nothing You Dismay" by William Sloane (written for this anthology)
• "A Scent of Sarsaparilla" by Ray Bradbury (Star Science Fiction Stories #1, February 1953

PART II: THERE ARE NO EASY ANSWERS

• "The Exile" by Alfred Coppel (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1952)
• "The Farthest Horizon" by Raymond F. Jones (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1952)
• "Noise Level" by Raymond F. Jones (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1952)
• "First Contact" by Murray Leinster (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1945)

PART III: SWEAT OF THE BROW

• "Franchise" by Kris Neville (Astounding Science Fiction, February 1951)
• "In Value Deceived" by H. B. Fyfe (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1950)
• "Okie" by James Blish (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1950)
• "Black Eyes and the Daily Grind" by Milton Lesser (If Magazine, March 1952)

PART IV: DIFFERENCE WITH DISTINCTION

• "Socrates" by John Christopher (Galaxy, March 1951)
• "In Hiding" by Wilmar H. Shiras (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1948)
• "Bettyann" by Kris Neville (reprinted from New Tales of Space & Time, edited by Raymond J. Healey, 1951)

PART V: THE TROUBLE WITH PEOPLE IS PEOPLE

• "The Ant and the Eye" by Chad Oliver (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1953)
• "Beep" by James Blish (Galaxy, February 1954)
• "And Then There Were None" by Eric Frank RussellAstounding Science Fiction, June 1951)
• "The Girls from Earth" by Frank M. Robinson (Galaxy, January 1952)

PART VI: VISITORS

• "Minister Without Portfolio" by Mildred Clingerman (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Feb 1952)
• "The Head-Hunters" by Ralph Williams (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1951)
• "Dune Roller" by Julian May (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1951)
• "Disguise" by Donald A. Wollheim (Other Worlds Science Stories, February 1953)
• "The Shed" by E. Everett Evans (Avon SF&F Reader, January 1953)

PART VII: THREE EPILOGS

• "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke (Star Science Fiction Stories #1, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1953)
• "The Forgotten Enemy" by Arthur C. Clarke (King’s College Review, December 1948)
• "The Answers" [also as “...And the Truth Shall Make You Free”] by Clifford D. Simak (Future, March 1953)

There are a few stories here that I'm familiar with, either being old favourites of mine, or having vague but fond memories of them - all of the stories by Clarke, Bradbury, Simak, Russell, Leinster and Blish. The rest I've either not read at all or read so long ago that I can't remember them. Personal favourites among these are Blish's "Beep", Leinster's "First Contact", Russell's "And Then There Were None", Simak's "Second Childhood", Bradbury's "The Wilderness", Robinson's "The Girls from Earth", and both of the Clarke stories.

As I've already said, the UK 1st edition is slightly different to the US edition:

TITLE: STORIES FOR TOMORROW
EDITED BY: William Sloane
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
FORMAT: Hardback, 476 pages
PUBLISHER: Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1955.

CONTENTS LISTING:

About This Book by William Sloane

PART I: THE HUMAN HEART

• "The Wilderness" by Ray Bradbury
• "Starbride" by Anthony Boucher
• "Homeland" by Mari Wolf
• "Let Nothing You Dismay" by William Sloane
• "A Scent of Sarsaparilla" by Ray Bradbury

PART II: THERE ARE NO EASY ANSWERS

• "Noise Level" by Raymond F. Jones
• "First Contact" by Murray Leinster

PART III: SWEAT OF THE BROW

• "Franchise" by Kris Neville
• "In Value Deceived" by H. B. Fyfe
• "Black Eyes and the Daily Grind" by Milton Lesser

PART IV: DIFFERENCE WITH DISTINCTION

• "Socrates" by John Christopher
• "In Hiding" by Wilmar H. Shiras
• "Bettyann" by Kris Neville

PART V: THE TROUBLE WITH PEOPLE IS PEOPLE

• "The Ant and the Eye" by Chad Oliver
• "Beep" by James Blish
• "And Then There Were None" by Eric Frank Russell
• "The Girls from Earth" by Frank M. Robinson

PART VI: VISITORS

• "Minister Without Portfolio" by Mildred Clingerman
• "The Head-Hunters" by Ralph Williams

PART VII: THREE EPILOGS

• "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke
• "The Forgotten Enemy" by Arthur C. Clarke
• "The Answers" by Clifford D. Simak

As with many anthologies from that period, a number of the stories have been cut from the UK edition that were in the original US edition. There are seven fewer stories, and the UK edition is 152 pages shorter. My UK edition also has a nice dustjacket, although the one on my copy is a bit on the tatty side.

Overall, another very interesting anthology. I'm looking forward to working my way through this one.

THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF LUCKY STARR by Paul French (Isaac Asimov)

Last time out, I listed some of the SF novels that I picked up recently, among them two of Isaac Asimov's Lucky Starr juvies that he wrote back in the 1950's under his Paul French pseudonym. Well, that set me to searching for the only single-volume omnibus of all six Lucky Starr novels, which I found on Amazon. It's quite hard to come by, being out-of-print, and quite expensive. But I took the plunge and bought it, and it arrived by mail in double-quick time.

So what've we got? Let's look at the details:

 

TITLE: THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF LUCKY STARR
AUTHOR: Paul French (Isaac Asimov)
CATEGORY: Novel
SUB-CATEGORY: Omnibus
FORMAT: Hardback, 701 pages
PUBLISHER: Science Fiction Book Club, in association with Doubleday & Co. Inc, New York, 2001
ISBN: 0-7394-1941-2

CONTENTS:

• Introduction to the Adventures of Lucky Starr
• Introduction to the Further Adventures of Lucky Starr
• David Starr - Space Ranger (1952)
• Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953)
• Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954)
• Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956)
• Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)
• Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958)

The reason for the two introductions is that the books were released in two volumes back in 1985, with a different introduction for each volume. So both introductions have been republished in this single volume. The introductions alone are very interesting, and give some nice insights into Asimov's thoughts on his old juvies from a vantage point of thirty years later.

Asimov spends much of both introductions, explaining, almost apologizing for how wrong he got the planetary science in his novels. I found all of this very entertaining, but, in effect, totally unnecessary. He wrote those books according to the knowledge that science had in the early 1950's, from telescopic observations of the planets, before the radar imaging and planetary probes of the 1960's and 1970's made that old knowledge totally obsolete.

Sure, the planetary science is in those books is wrong and way out of date. Hey, so what? All planetary science before the Mariner space probes and those that followed is hopelessly out of date. There are no oceans on Venus, and it is a boiling, poisonous, high-pressure inferno to outdo any religious visions of hell. There has never been any advanced life or civilizations on Mars, no canals, and only an extremely thin, cold atmosphere. Mercury does not keep one side only to the Sun, Saturn's rings are radically more complex, and the lunar families of both Jupiter and Saturn are much larger than they ever suspected back then, and the lunar ecologies of both planets much more complex than they could ever have imagined.

But you know what? I don't give a hoot. That kind of thing has never bothered me too much, any more than the "wrong" planetary science in the books of earlier "greats". I just shunt these Lucky Starr stories into the same alternate solar system where all the mythical planets of great earlier writers reside. Asimov is in some great company there: Stanley G. Weinbaum, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, Edwin Lester Arnold, C. S. Lewis, Raymond Z. Gallun, P. Schuyler Miller, Ray Bradbury, Clifford D. Simak, James Blish, Clark Ashton Smith, John Wyndham, Frederik Pohl, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Ed Hamilton, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert A. Heinlein and many, many other giants of the genre. These earlier solar system tales exist in their own little continuum, untouched by cold, hard, modern scientific facts. Nor should they be.

I first read most of these novels (all except Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus and Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury) way back in my early teens, usually on loan from local libraries. These were the classic NEL (New English Library) UK paperback editions, with those beautiful covers. Even now that I have the hardback omnibus, I still want to pick up those paperbacks in good condition, just for the covers.

I've been reading a little of the first novel in the series, and the writing holds up surprisingly well today. I think I'm going to really enjoy reacquainting myself with David "Lucky" Starr, Bigman and the rest in these fun books.