The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories - Entry #11

The Second Night of Summer, by James H. Schmitz

                                 This story’s most interesting element, and probably its best claim to being in this anthology, is that the primary mover of the story is Granny Wannattel. Published in Galaxy Magazine in 1950, Wannattel is your basic Sci-Fi hero except for one important thing -- she is a woman -- putting Schmitz at the forefront of making space for women in the genre (indeed, some women would later name him as an influence in their future careers). Wannattel is a sort of psionic agent (yep, telepathy is ubiquitous in the Sci-Fi of this period), who comes to a planet to find and destroy a transmitter that will awaken a dormant hive-mind species, who will overrun the planet and wipe out the human(oid) population on the planet. It is a tricky business because to find the transmitter, Wannattel must enter the hive minds with her telepathy just as they are awakening and responding to the transmitter. What makes Wannatel such a cool character and Schmitz so important is that she just happens to be a woman. There are no men for her to love, there is no future of marriage for her to dream about, there is only the job at hand and her doing a little recruiting for her agency. And this was in 1950. Impressive and worthy of a place in this anthology. However, I must add a caveat: it is one of the least interesting plots in the anthology, making it a fair to middling story at best. Such a shame. Perhaps something else from Schmitz’s Agent of Vega series would have been better. 

                           

The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories - Entry #10

The Monster, by A.E. van Vogt

                                 Who is the Monster? That’s the question raised by A.E. van Vogt in this surprisingly lasting story of space colonization, alien encounter and “hubris getting clobbered my nemesis” with a little extra hubris setting itself up all over again (thanks, Mr. Aldiss). Two things make this tale stand out from the crowd: one, the fact that we are seeing it from the perspective of the Ganae, a colonizing, fundamentalist, expansive alien race; and two, what it suggests about humanity and our bloodthirstiness. Van Vogt may have been a bit of a hack at times, but that crazy Canuck had some perspectives worth listening to. 

                             
                                        Click on this link to read a story here.

                                     

The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories - Entry #9

The Piper's Son, by Lewis Padgett

                                  There are lots of reasons to appreciate Lewis Padgett’s (actually wife - husband team, C.L. Moore & Harold Kuttner) The Piper’s Son: telepathy from mutation, post-nuclear social reimagining, a hint of social anarchy, along with the three big themes it is tackling -- racism, mental health, and ethics. It is in these three themes that The Piper’s Son fails to engage with me as it might have when it was published in 1945. First racism; the authors use human fear of the “Baldies” (the telepaths marked by their total lack of hair ... a common enough trope when it comes to the telapthic in Sci-Fi) to examine racism, and they put the responsibility for overcoming the views of the ignorant squarely in the camp of the victims of racism, who are, and this is where things go from merely problematic to troublesome, the “Baldies” trying to assimilate, while the “Baldies” and “Freaks” who can’t function are merely cast aside without thought or care by anyone, and the supposed paranoid “Baldies” are seen as the root of ignorant fear and are actively and violently excised from the body politic. Second, mental health; the paranoics or dps (those with the old designation, dementia praecox) are cast away, seen as evil, seen as predators, and handled by their mentally healthy brethren with daggers and murder. What is most troubling about this is that the authors don’t seem to be making the connection between this fearful and ignorant behaviour and the racist behaviour of humans towards mainstream “Baldies.” If that connection was implied, it might enrich the story, but their failure diminishes the tale. Third, ethics; this is where the story gave me the most trouble. It seems to want to discuss ethics throughout, to makes us believe that Burkhalter is an ethical man, but when he engages in one form of behaviour, which sets up the baseline of his ethics, then casts his own impediments aside to engage in that very behaviour on his son because he is his son ... well, that troubles me. Perhaps they are making a comment on situational ethics, but if they are, their attempt is ham fisted at best. It is a fascinating story, however, and its undeniable connection to the superheroic makes it worth a look. 

                                

The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories - Entry #8

Desertion, by Clifford D. Simak

                                 Shippey’s seeming editorial preoccupation with the criticism of humanism in Sci-Fi finds its clearest expression in Simak’s Desertion. It is the most explicit declaration that humanity is nothing special in the universe. I imagine many would find this particular story anywhere from insulting to depressing; I find it utterly liberating of my spirit. Couple all of this with a rare and wonderful visit to our gas giant, Jupiter (the poor cousin to Mars and the Moon when it comes to Sci-Fi visitation and colonization), and Desertion has to be one of my favourite stories in this anthology (but then I am partial to anything that takes us to the gas giants).

                     

                                        Click on this link to read a story here .
                        Click on this link to listen to an audio-story here.

The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories - Entry #7

Night, by John W. Campbell Jr.

                    Important because it was written by John W. Campbell Jr., editor MAXIMUS of Astounding Science Fiction Magazine, the man who wrote Who Goes There? (the basis for every version of The Thing ever filmed ), Night is a powerful and ahead of its time meditation on space and time. It is cold, repetitive (which, I think is a reflection of how Campbell thought time worked), and intentionally confusing, but it is also a destruction of human ego, which makes it one of the earliest Sci-Fi meditations on what it is to be us. And if that isn’t enough, it is a speculative consideration of gravity at the end of everything. This story is as cool as they get. 

                                        Click on this link to read a story here .
                        Click on this link to listen to an audio-story here.

The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories - Entry #6

A Martian Odyssey, by Stanley G. Weinbaum

                                 Amongst the smattering of weird and whacky stories that appear in this anthology, A Martian Odyssey is, to me, the weirdest and the whackiest. Like many of the other tales, it takes some old mythology and spins it into a future tale, imagining one of the more unique alien species I’ve encountered: the avian-like Martian, Tweel.

                                   

                                            To my mind, it is Tweel who takes the role of Odysseus, and our narrator, the human Dick Jarvis, who accompanies Tweel as they cross the Martian landscape, takes on the role of Homer, relating the Odyssey to the crew of the Ares who’ve joined Dick on the surface of the red planet. 


                                        Click on this link to read a story here .
                        Click on this link to listen to an audio-story here.

                                          A Martian Odyssey is mostly a stringing together of “scary,” pseudo-mythical encounters, with Tweel -- more than a few times -- and eventually a deus ex machina saving Dick from his own stupidity. Without Tweel, in fact, the story would be a little too thin to hold up, but Tweel allows A Martian Odysseyto transcend both its sketchy plot and what would otherwise be a rather frustrating expression of the exceptionalist attitudes of humanism. Tweel is one of the earliest examples of an attempt to create a unique and highly intelligent alien species, and it is all Tweel’s idiosyncrasies that make this story worth while.

The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories - Entry #5

The Metal Man, by Jack Williamson

                                  Medusa and Icharus. Those are the touchstones for me in the Metal Man. I actually forgot what this story was about, and was misled by the title into the obvious and a little on the nose assumption that it is a story of robotics. It isn’t. Instead, it is a reimagining of Greek Mythology, specifically bringing together Medusa’s petrification and Icharus’ reaching too far in the adventure of Dr. Kelvin. He is a radium hunter, and he stumbles on a quite fantastic hidden land, wherein a lifeform he can’t understand, something completely foreign to our conception, a giant spherical mechanism with protruding yellow fire spikes (hello, Medusa!), has petrified unsuspecting animals throughout the ages. He ends up there by overstretching, quite like Icharus, and only escapes through a stroke of floral luck, only to deliver his tale and succumb to inevitable petrification. The trouble is, despite multiple readings, I don’t feel there is a whole hell of a lot to extract from this tale, and it seems out of place in this anthology. Yet, it does show the clear link between mythology and speculative fiction, so perhaps that is good enough.