What do you think?
Rate this book
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume II B
This volume is the definitive collection of the best science fiction novellas between 1929 to 1964 and contains eleven great classics. There is no better anthology that captures the birth of science fiction as a literary field.
Published in 1973 to honor stories that had come before the institution of the Nebula Awards, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame introduced tens of thousands of young readers to the wonders of science fiction and was a favorite of libraries across the country.
Eleven more classic novellas by the most honored authors of science fiction. Companion to Volume IIA.
Introduction · Ben Bova
The Martian Way · Isaac Asimov · na Galaxy Nov ’52
Earthman, Come Home [Okie] · James Blish · nv Astounding Nov ’53
Rogue Moon · Algis Budrys · na F&SF Dec ’60
The Specter General · Theodore R. Cogswell · na Astounding Jun ’52
The Machine Stops · E. M. Forster · nv Oxford and Cambridge Review Nov ’09
The Midas Plague · Frederik Pohl · na Galaxy Apr ’54
The Witches of Karres · James H. Schmitz · nv Astounding Dec ’49
E for Effort · T. L. Sherred · nv Astounding May ’47
In Hiding · Wilmar H. Shiras · nv Astounding Nov ’48
The Big Front Yard · Clifford D. Simak · na Astounding Oct ’58
The Moon Moth · Jack Vance · na Galaxy Aug ’61
Published in 1973 to honor stories that had come before the institution of the Nebula Awards, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame introduced tens of thousands of young readers to the wonders of science fiction and was a favorite of libraries across the country.
Eleven more classic novellas by the most honored authors of science fiction. Companion to Volume IIA.
Introduction · Ben Bova
The Martian Way · Isaac Asimov · na Galaxy Nov ’52
Earthman, Come Home [Okie] · James Blish · nv Astounding Nov ’53
Rogue Moon · Algis Budrys · na F&SF Dec ’60
The Specter General · Theodore R. Cogswell · na Astounding Jun ’52
The Machine Stops · E. M. Forster · nv Oxford and Cambridge Review Nov ’09
The Midas Plague · Frederik Pohl · na Galaxy Apr ’54
The Witches of Karres · James H. Schmitz · nv Astounding Dec ’49
E for Effort · T. L. Sherred · nv Astounding May ’47
In Hiding · Wilmar H. Shiras · nv Astounding Nov ’48
The Big Front Yard · Clifford D. Simak · na Astounding Oct ’58
The Moon Moth · Jack Vance · na Galaxy Aug ’61
559 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
95 people are currently reading
1181 people want to read
About the author
Ben Bova
714 books1,036 followersBen Bova was born on November 8, 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1953, while attending Temple University, he married Rosa Cucinotta, they had a son and a daughter. He would later divorce Rosa in 1974. In that same year he married Barbara Berson Rose.
Bova was an avid fencer and organized Avco Everett's fencing club. He was an environmentalist, but rejected Luddism.
Bova was a technical writer for Project Vanguard and later for Avco Everett in the 1960s when they did research in lasers and fluid dynamics. It was there that he met Arthur R. Kantrowitz later of the Foresight Institute.
In 1971 he became editor of Analog Science Fiction after John W. Campbell's death. After leaving Analog, he went on to edit Omni during 1978-1982.
In 1974 he wrote the screenplay for an episode of the children's science fiction television series Land of the Lost entitled "The Search".
Bova was the science advisor for the failed television series The Starlost, leaving in disgust after the airing of the first episode. His novel The Starcrossed was loosely based on his experiences and featured a thinly veiled characterization of his friend and colleague Harlan Ellison. He dedicated the novel to "Cordwainer Bird", the pen name Harlan Ellison uses when he does not want to be associated with a television or film project.
Bova was the President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past President of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).
Bova went back to school in the 1980s, earning an M.A. in communications in 1987 and a Ph.D. in 1996.
Bova has drawn on these meetings and experiences to create fact and fiction writings rich with references to spaceflight, lasers, artificial hearts, nanotechnology, environmentalism, fencing and martial arts, photography and artists.
Bova was the author of over a hundred and fifteen books, non-fiction as well as science fiction. In 2000, he was the Author Guest of Honor at the 58th World Science Fiction Convention (Chicon 2000).
Hollywood has started to take an interest in Bova's works once again, in addition to his wealth of knowledge about science and what the future may look like. In 2007, he was hired as a consultant by both Stuber/Parent Productions to provide insight into what the world is to look like in the near future for their upcoming film "Repossession Mambo" (released as "Repo Men") starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker and by Silver Pictures in which he provided consulting services on the feature adaptation of Richard Morgan's "Altered Carbon".
http://us.macmillan.com/author/benbova
Bova was an avid fencer and organized Avco Everett's fencing club. He was an environmentalist, but rejected Luddism.
Bova was a technical writer for Project Vanguard and later for Avco Everett in the 1960s when they did research in lasers and fluid dynamics. It was there that he met Arthur R. Kantrowitz later of the Foresight Institute.
In 1971 he became editor of Analog Science Fiction after John W. Campbell's death. After leaving Analog, he went on to edit Omni during 1978-1982.
In 1974 he wrote the screenplay for an episode of the children's science fiction television series Land of the Lost entitled "The Search".
Bova was the science advisor for the failed television series The Starlost, leaving in disgust after the airing of the first episode. His novel The Starcrossed was loosely based on his experiences and featured a thinly veiled characterization of his friend and colleague Harlan Ellison. He dedicated the novel to "Cordwainer Bird", the pen name Harlan Ellison uses when he does not want to be associated with a television or film project.
Bova was the President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past President of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).
Bova went back to school in the 1980s, earning an M.A. in communications in 1987 and a Ph.D. in 1996.
Bova has drawn on these meetings and experiences to create fact and fiction writings rich with references to spaceflight, lasers, artificial hearts, nanotechnology, environmentalism, fencing and martial arts, photography and artists.
Bova was the author of over a hundred and fifteen books, non-fiction as well as science fiction. In 2000, he was the Author Guest of Honor at the 58th World Science Fiction Convention (Chicon 2000).
Hollywood has started to take an interest in Bova's works once again, in addition to his wealth of knowledge about science and what the future may look like. In 2007, he was hired as a consultant by both Stuber/Parent Productions to provide insight into what the world is to look like in the near future for their upcoming film "Repossession Mambo" (released as "Repo Men") starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker and by Silver Pictures in which he provided consulting services on the feature adaptation of Richard Morgan's "Altered Carbon".
http://us.macmillan.com/author/benbova
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
March 21, 2019
3 1/2
This contains eleven novellas, advertised as the Greatest Science Fiction Novellas of All Time. But (leaving aside the issue of what is a novella, what a short story) that can’t be right. Even though the selections were chosen by polling the SF Writers of America, the problem is that the book was published in 1973, and contains no selections individually published after 1961. All but one of the stories was published after 1946.
So what we really have is great SF novellas from the period 1947-1961, and this is why many of the stories, perhaps most, seem so dated. Actually, the science aspect of the stories is not so dated as one might guess. These are, after all, authors who were to some extent at least looking into the future, with quite far-seeing eyes. No, the stories are dated more by their style and feeling.
Several stories are characterized by their surprise, happy endings, what we might call a “cheerful resolution”. (A good example is the first selection, “The Martian Way”, by Asimov.) The “surprise ending” or “twist” at the finish of a science fiction story is of course a hallmark of the genre, and points out the close connection that the SF short story has with the mystery story. But the happy ending, the twist that produces the “See, everything turned out all right!” finale, is a bit off-putting to me. No doubt many non-SF stories, by many authors, fit this mold. But I prefer stories that, if not outright grim, even at their most cheerful say nothing more than “Well, that’s life … not dreadful, but not particularly uplifting either!” I’m thinking here of stories I’ve read by such writers as Poe, Chekhov, Dinesen, Faulkner, Joyce, Henry James, Hemingway, Mann, Salinger and Maugham. These writers do not often produce cheerful resolutions.
I did enjoy several of the selections. “The Machine Stops”, by E.M. Forster (the oldest selection, from 1928, by the author of A Passage to India!) is chilling; “The Midas Plague”, by Frederik Pohl, is a delightful twist on consumerism; “In Hiding”, by Wilmar H. Shiras, is a clever story of role –reversal involving an all-knowing psychiatrist and a troubled boy; and “The Moon Moth”, by Jack Vance, despite its cheerful resolution, is probably the most inventive story of the lot, taking place on a world with remarkable customs.
But I have read better collections, even collections from earlier periods of SF, thus having fewer stories to pick from. Adventures in Time and Space Famous Science Fiction Stories is a collection of thirty-some stories first published in 1946 as a Modern Library Giant; most of the stories first appeared in John W. Campbell’s Astounding Stories magazine in the period 1937-1945, the so-called Golden Age of SF. Destination Universe is a shorter collection of stories from the decade of the ‘40s by a single author, the Canadian writer A.E. Van Vogt. Both of these books, which I read in my teens, made a stronger impression on me than the book under review.
Incidentally, to check whether the memories I have of these earlier collections could stand the test of time, I reread a couple stories from the larger book: “Nightfall” by Asimov, and “Black Destroyer” by Van Vogt. The former story absolutely destroys the Asimov selection in the Hall of Fame book, and the latter, although actually having a fairly cheerful resolution (the “good guys” win, but fewer than half of them are alive when the curtain falls), is an early forerunner of the “Alien” type of story, with the humans facing an adversary having immense powers.
For anyone looking for a solid collection of SF stories written before 1960, I would recommend either of these two collections over the Hall of Fame book.
Finally, I must quote the opening lines of the very first story in the Famous SF collection - "Requiem", by Robert Heinlein.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: Lives of the Artists Vasari
Next review: Look Homeward Angel
More recent review: Midsummer Night's Dream
Previous library review: Italy in Mind
Next library review: The Open Boat and Other Stories Stephen Crane
This contains eleven novellas, advertised as the Greatest Science Fiction Novellas of All Time. But (leaving aside the issue of what is a novella, what a short story) that can’t be right. Even though the selections were chosen by polling the SF Writers of America, the problem is that the book was published in 1973, and contains no selections individually published after 1961. All but one of the stories was published after 1946.
So what we really have is great SF novellas from the period 1947-1961, and this is why many of the stories, perhaps most, seem so dated. Actually, the science aspect of the stories is not so dated as one might guess. These are, after all, authors who were to some extent at least looking into the future, with quite far-seeing eyes. No, the stories are dated more by their style and feeling.
Several stories are characterized by their surprise, happy endings, what we might call a “cheerful resolution”. (A good example is the first selection, “The Martian Way”, by Asimov.) The “surprise ending” or “twist” at the finish of a science fiction story is of course a hallmark of the genre, and points out the close connection that the SF short story has with the mystery story. But the happy ending, the twist that produces the “See, everything turned out all right!” finale, is a bit off-putting to me. No doubt many non-SF stories, by many authors, fit this mold. But I prefer stories that, if not outright grim, even at their most cheerful say nothing more than “Well, that’s life … not dreadful, but not particularly uplifting either!” I’m thinking here of stories I’ve read by such writers as Poe, Chekhov, Dinesen, Faulkner, Joyce, Henry James, Hemingway, Mann, Salinger and Maugham. These writers do not often produce cheerful resolutions.
I did enjoy several of the selections. “The Machine Stops”, by E.M. Forster (the oldest selection, from 1928, by the author of A Passage to India!) is chilling; “The Midas Plague”, by Frederik Pohl, is a delightful twist on consumerism; “In Hiding”, by Wilmar H. Shiras, is a clever story of role –reversal involving an all-knowing psychiatrist and a troubled boy; and “The Moon Moth”, by Jack Vance, despite its cheerful resolution, is probably the most inventive story of the lot, taking place on a world with remarkable customs.
But I have read better collections, even collections from earlier periods of SF, thus having fewer stories to pick from. Adventures in Time and Space Famous Science Fiction Stories is a collection of thirty-some stories first published in 1946 as a Modern Library Giant; most of the stories first appeared in John W. Campbell’s Astounding Stories magazine in the period 1937-1945, the so-called Golden Age of SF. Destination Universe is a shorter collection of stories from the decade of the ‘40s by a single author, the Canadian writer A.E. Van Vogt. Both of these books, which I read in my teens, made a stronger impression on me than the book under review.
Incidentally, to check whether the memories I have of these earlier collections could stand the test of time, I reread a couple stories from the larger book: “Nightfall” by Asimov, and “Black Destroyer” by Van Vogt. The former story absolutely destroys the Asimov selection in the Hall of Fame book, and the latter, although actually having a fairly cheerful resolution (the “good guys” win, but fewer than half of them are alive when the curtain falls), is an early forerunner of the “Alien” type of story, with the humans facing an adversary having immense powers.
For anyone looking for a solid collection of SF stories written before 1960, I would recommend either of these two collections over the Hall of Fame book.
Finally, I must quote the opening lines of the very first story in the Famous SF collection - "Requiem", by Robert Heinlein.
On a high hill in Samoa there is a grave. Inscribed on the marker are these words:I've never fogotten this epigraph, which was written by Robert Louis Stevenson for his own tombstone. According to Wiki, it was translated to a Samoan song of grief which is well-known and still sung in Samoa.
"Under the wide and starry sky
Dig my grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I lay me down with a will!
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: Lives of the Artists Vasari
Next review: Look Homeward Angel
More recent review: Midsummer Night's Dream
Previous library review: Italy in Mind
Next library review: The Open Boat and Other Stories Stephen Crane
June 10, 2024
The second part of the second volume of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame series contains the rest of the novellas published prior to 1965 that were selected by the Science Fiction Writers of America for meritorious distinction. The novellas selected were apparently divided at random between Volume 2-A and Volume 2-B; I found this batch of stories to be, on the whole, a little bit better than those in Volume 2-A. Stories in each volume are ordered by author's surname, rather than chronologically as the stories in Volume 1 were arranged.
The stories included in this volume, along with a rating and a brief comment for each, include:
The Martian Way by Isaac Asimov (1952) - 4/5 - ice pirates!
Earthman, Come Home by James Blish (1953) - 3/5 - the politics of flying cities
Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys (1960) - 5/5 - the exploration of a Lovecraftian alien artifact found on the moon
The Spectre General by Theodore R. Cogswell (1952) - 3/5 - mildly humorous story of a band of lost space marines
The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster (1909) - 4/5 - the dehumanization of progress
The Midas Plague by Frederik Pohl (1954) - 4/5 - satirical look at rampart consumerism
The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz (1949) - 4/5 - witches in space!
E for Effort by T. L. Sherred (1947) - 4/5 - realpolitikal consequences of a time viewer
In Hiding by Wilmar H. Shiras (1948) - 4/5 - check out the big brain on Timothy!
The Big Front Yard by Clifford D. Simak (1958) - 5/5 - foresees, in many ways, the author's own Way Station
The Moon Moth by Jack Vance (1961) - 5/5 - sometimes a false face is your best bet
The stories included in this volume, along with a rating and a brief comment for each, include:
The Martian Way by Isaac Asimov (1952) - 4/5 - ice pirates!
Earthman, Come Home by James Blish (1953) - 3/5 - the politics of flying cities
Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys (1960) - 5/5 - the exploration of a Lovecraftian alien artifact found on the moon
The Spectre General by Theodore R. Cogswell (1952) - 3/5 - mildly humorous story of a band of lost space marines
The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster (1909) - 4/5 - the dehumanization of progress
The Midas Plague by Frederik Pohl (1954) - 4/5 - satirical look at rampart consumerism
The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz (1949) - 4/5 - witches in space!
E for Effort by T. L. Sherred (1947) - 4/5 - realpolitikal consequences of a time viewer
In Hiding by Wilmar H. Shiras (1948) - 4/5 - check out the big brain on Timothy!
The Big Front Yard by Clifford D. Simak (1958) - 5/5 - foresees, in many ways, the author's own Way Station
The Moon Moth by Jack Vance (1961) - 5/5 - sometimes a false face is your best bet
April 26, 2010
I have not read all the stories in this collection, so this review will cover only those I have read so far (and I will update periodically as I read more over them):
THE MIDAS PLAGUE by Frederic Pohl (4.5 stars): Great novella about the "consummerism" gone wild. In a future where cheap energy and robot workers have made the production of consumer products "easy and cheap" the "poor" are forced to spend all their time in constant consumption in order to keep pace with the robots' extravagant production. Funny and thought provoking. (Read on October 27, 2007)
THE MACHINE STOPS by E.M. Forster (4.5 to 5.0 stars): A classic, haunting short story (more like a novella) written in 1909. The story concerns a world in which humanity (long ago) lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth (through War, disease, etc.). Now each person lives in almost complete "isolation" below ground in a "cell" where all their needs are taken care of by "the Machine." The Machine is an advanced computer created by humans in the distant past to assist mankind and on which mankind continued to rely on more and more until they became totaly dependant upon it. At the time of the story, people do not like to travel, all communicaiton is conducted via (can you believe it) instant messaging and video conferencing (remember this was written in 1909) and people are no longer "intellectually" curious.
The plot involves a member of the society who begins to distrust the way society is living, longs to visit the surface of the world and be free from the "assistance" of the Machine. I won't give any more away, but this is a powerful story (again written over 100 years ago) about the possible dangers of becoming over dependent on technology. (Read on July 23, 2009).
THE MIDAS PLAGUE by Frederic Pohl (4.5 stars): Great novella about the "consummerism" gone wild. In a future where cheap energy and robot workers have made the production of consumer products "easy and cheap" the "poor" are forced to spend all their time in constant consumption in order to keep pace with the robots' extravagant production. Funny and thought provoking. (Read on October 27, 2007)
THE MACHINE STOPS by E.M. Forster (4.5 to 5.0 stars): A classic, haunting short story (more like a novella) written in 1909. The story concerns a world in which humanity (long ago) lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth (through War, disease, etc.). Now each person lives in almost complete "isolation" below ground in a "cell" where all their needs are taken care of by "the Machine." The Machine is an advanced computer created by humans in the distant past to assist mankind and on which mankind continued to rely on more and more until they became totaly dependant upon it. At the time of the story, people do not like to travel, all communicaiton is conducted via (can you believe it) instant messaging and video conferencing (remember this was written in 1909) and people are no longer "intellectually" curious.
The plot involves a member of the society who begins to distrust the way society is living, longs to visit the surface of the world and be free from the "assistance" of the Machine. I won't give any more away, but this is a powerful story (again written over 100 years ago) about the possible dangers of becoming over dependent on technology. (Read on July 23, 2009).
February 7, 2013
The Martian Way (1952) by Isaac Asimov 5/5
Earthman, Come Home (1953) by James Blish 5/5
Rogue Moon (1960) by Algis Budrys 3/5
The Specter General (1952) by Theodore Cogswell 5/5
The Machine Stops (1909) by E.M. Forster 5/5
The Midas Plague (1954) by Frederik Pohl 4/5
The Witches of Karres (1949) by James H. Schmitz 5/5
E for Effort (1947) by T.L. Sherred 5/5
In Hiding (1948) by Wilmar H. Shiras 5/5
The Big Front Yard (1958) by Clifford D. Simak 5/5
The Moon Moth (1961) by Jack Vance 4/5
Earthman, Come Home (1953) by James Blish 5/5
Rogue Moon (1960) by Algis Budrys 3/5
The Specter General (1952) by Theodore Cogswell 5/5
The Machine Stops (1909) by E.M. Forster 5/5
The Midas Plague (1954) by Frederik Pohl 4/5
The Witches of Karres (1949) by James H. Schmitz 5/5
E for Effort (1947) by T.L. Sherred 5/5
In Hiding (1948) by Wilmar H. Shiras 5/5
The Big Front Yard (1958) by Clifford D. Simak 5/5
The Moon Moth (1961) by Jack Vance 4/5
February 10, 2012
Some really excellent novellas in this volume, including one of my favorites (Rogue Moon). There were a couple that I completely glossed over and some others that were interesting in premise but I didn't like the execution. Given that most of them were written before 1950, I think that's to be expected, however.
October 7, 2011
This is a remarkable collection of science fiction novellas that completes the previous volume, IIA. Personally, I feel that it is a stronger collection than its predecessor. I thoroughly enjoyed several of the stories herein. Of the ones that I didn't care for as much, it can be said that each had a memorable, crafty, or unique issue that they focused upon.
I was particularly struck by the intriguing world-view of "The Machine Stops," as well as the visionary qualities of its author. Although it was originally published in 1909, the novella does not stand out like a sore thumb amongst its more recently conceived brethren. In it, E. M. Forster depicts a future of comfort and vice in the form of a global network of devices, known as The Machine. In no uncertain terms, Forster predicts things such as television, the internet, and face-talk calling as mediums that aid in the isolation of each individual human being from every other. What unbelievable foresight! It is a great read.
My favorites from this collection include:
"Rogue Moon"
"The Machine Stops"
"The Midas Plague"
"E for Effort"
"The Big Front Yard"
I was particularly struck by the intriguing world-view of "The Machine Stops," as well as the visionary qualities of its author. Although it was originally published in 1909, the novella does not stand out like a sore thumb amongst its more recently conceived brethren. In it, E. M. Forster depicts a future of comfort and vice in the form of a global network of devices, known as The Machine. In no uncertain terms, Forster predicts things such as television, the internet, and face-talk calling as mediums that aid in the isolation of each individual human being from every other. What unbelievable foresight! It is a great read.
My favorites from this collection include:
"Rogue Moon"
"The Machine Stops"
"The Midas Plague"
"E for Effort"
"The Big Front Yard"
February 25, 2011
These books changed my life. Without picking up the best short stories and novellas volumes in the early 1980s, I doubt I would have become the ravenous SF fan I became. The selection of stories and novellas is impeccable. READ IT.
August 1, 2013
This second volume of classic novellas may be even better than the first. Great stuff from Pohl and Theodore Cogswell, favorites from Algis Budrys and Clifford Simak, the original Karres story by James H. Schmitz, Blish and Asimov... you can't go wrong with this collection.
April 10, 2023
This volume collects novellas, and I haven't read it in way too long. A good length for Science Fiction! As you know, dear Reader.😇
Not at our libraries, 4/10/23, boo hoo. Thriftbooks!
On order from Amazon, 4/10/23. $6 ppd. Yay!
Not at our libraries, 4/10/23, boo hoo. Thriftbooks!
On order from Amazon, 4/10/23. $6 ppd. Yay!
February 2, 2018
As a collection, this is interesting; not sure I’d call them the “greatest science fiction novellas of all time” in the way that the same series collects the best science fiction short stories.
Isaac Asimov’s The Martian Way starts out as a standard, moderately clumsy early fifties science fiction adventure. Quickly transforms into a beautiful description of working in space, and the real interactions of real people.
The description of the journey to Saturn is alone worth the read.
James Blish’s Earthman Come Home is a far-future adventure story in which a city of immortals, after leaving Earth ages past, has decided for economic reasons that it is now time to settle down on a new planet. But there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s a good, solid, adventure in which one side needs to outwit another side, when both of them are on the run from the law.
Algis Budrys’s Rogue Moon takes the other side of an adventure tale. Teleportation works like in Star Trek: a person is dissolved into their component parts, which are recorded and discarded and the recording reassembled at the other end. But since it is all a matter of reassembling a recording, it can be done twice, creating duplicates of the person. Duplicates also have a melded mind for a five to ten minutes or so, which means one can perceive what the other perceives.
There is an artifact on the moon which acts like a D&D dungeon; people are duplicated, one on the moon, one on earth. Their moon duplicate goes in, dies in a strange way, and then the earth duplicate is duplicated again knowing what the previous pair discovered.
Normally this would be a videogame-style story, covering the repeated attempts to beat the dungeon. But in Algis Budrys’s story, the focus is on the people running the transmitter, killing the same person over and over, slowly learning more about this alien unknown in the most cold-hearted manner possible.
Next up are two stories that show that socialism can even screw up plenty. E.M. Forster’s classic The Machine Stops in which people forget what ideas are and, like Budrys’s story, forget how things work; but they also develop either laws or culture that forbid doing anything that might upset the presumably precarious distribution chain. Because despite all this plenty, the central board makes everything the same.
Turns out, not only is everything the same size but in typical socialist fashion the solution in this world is to mold the person to match the product, rather than the product to match the fashion.
In Frederik Pohl’s The Midas Plague, there’s a similar solution. Again, the problem is that the things created by committee under socialism are usually not the things desired by consumers, or are in the wrong quantities, but boy do that have a lot of it. Pohl’s society solves this by rationing, as most socialists are fond of, but by rationing non-consumption instead of things. Every person has a minimum consumption that they must meet in order to hide the massive failures of the production boards.
James H. Schmitz’s The Witches of Karres, on the other hand, is pure old-school wonder. It could well have been the start of a series ( and apparently was). A young man trying to impress his future father-in-law’s family by turning their space trading vessel into a profit runs across three slave children with special powers and no understanding of how civilized culture works. Hijinx ensue. It’s a lot of fun and more than a bit weird both in how it treats space travel and the culture it must have been written in.
T.L. Sherred’s E for Effort is a fun, if naive, story about a machine that can see anywhere in time—at least in the present and past—across the surface of the earth. Anything and anyone can be spied on by someone possessing the machine. They use it, first, to make epic movies of ancient history, but they have bigger plans for it. What remains unexplained throughout is why it was able to be built on practically no money but couldn’t be repeated (except that it must have been) when they were wealthy; the ramble in the beginning about being unable to capitalize on it because he had no money showed very little imagination for someone who could imagine the machine.
Wilmar H. Shiras’s In Hiding tells about a child psychologist who happens upon a child who not only is a child prodigy, but who is so far above all other child prodigies that he has learned to hide his skills in order to avoid scaring the adults around him.
Oh, and he’s an orphan, living with his grandparents.
Cliff Simak’s The Big Front Yard is another of Simak’s tales of meeting alien races for the first time. An antiques dealer and fix-it man finds his home taken over by tiny, unknown creatures who seem to want to do nothing but help. Why are they there? And why him? It’s a typical Simak story in that nobody’s particularly evil and everyone is human.
Jack Vance’s The Moon Moth is probably the most unique space western I’ve ever read. His “sheriff” lands on a very strange world where everyone wears masks and speaks accompanied by musical instruments—a truly tonal language where different instruments drastically change the meaning of spoken/sung words.
This is the only one of these stories that I remember reading before, probably not because it’s the only one I’ve read before but because it is so memorable.
Isaac Asimov’s The Martian Way starts out as a standard, moderately clumsy early fifties science fiction adventure. Quickly transforms into a beautiful description of working in space, and the real interactions of real people.
The description of the journey to Saturn is alone worth the read.
James Blish’s Earthman Come Home is a far-future adventure story in which a city of immortals, after leaving Earth ages past, has decided for economic reasons that it is now time to settle down on a new planet. But there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s a good, solid, adventure in which one side needs to outwit another side, when both of them are on the run from the law.
Algis Budrys’s Rogue Moon takes the other side of an adventure tale. Teleportation works like in Star Trek: a person is dissolved into their component parts, which are recorded and discarded and the recording reassembled at the other end. But since it is all a matter of reassembling a recording, it can be done twice, creating duplicates of the person. Duplicates also have a melded mind for a five to ten minutes or so, which means one can perceive what the other perceives.
There is an artifact on the moon which acts like a D&D dungeon; people are duplicated, one on the moon, one on earth. Their moon duplicate goes in, dies in a strange way, and then the earth duplicate is duplicated again knowing what the previous pair discovered.
Normally this would be a videogame-style story, covering the repeated attempts to beat the dungeon. But in Algis Budrys’s story, the focus is on the people running the transmitter, killing the same person over and over, slowly learning more about this alien unknown in the most cold-hearted manner possible.
Next up are two stories that show that socialism can even screw up plenty. E.M. Forster’s classic The Machine Stops in which people forget what ideas are and, like Budrys’s story, forget how things work; but they also develop either laws or culture that forbid doing anything that might upset the presumably precarious distribution chain. Because despite all this plenty, the central board makes everything the same.
The bed was not to her liking. It was too large, and she had a feeling for a small bed. Complaint was useless, for beds had the same dimension all over the world, and to have had an alternative size would have involved vast alterations in the Machine.
Turns out, not only is everything the same size but in typical socialist fashion the solution in this world is to mold the person to match the product, rather than the product to match the fashion.
In Frederik Pohl’s The Midas Plague, there’s a similar solution. Again, the problem is that the things created by committee under socialism are usually not the things desired by consumers, or are in the wrong quantities, but boy do that have a lot of it. Pohl’s society solves this by rationing, as most socialists are fond of, but by rationing non-consumption instead of things. Every person has a minimum consumption that they must meet in order to hide the massive failures of the production boards.
James H. Schmitz’s The Witches of Karres, on the other hand, is pure old-school wonder. It could well have been the start of a series ( and apparently was). A young man trying to impress his future father-in-law’s family by turning their space trading vessel into a profit runs across three slave children with special powers and no understanding of how civilized culture works. Hijinx ensue. It’s a lot of fun and more than a bit weird both in how it treats space travel and the culture it must have been written in.
T.L. Sherred’s E for Effort is a fun, if naive, story about a machine that can see anywhere in time—at least in the present and past—across the surface of the earth. Anything and anyone can be spied on by someone possessing the machine. They use it, first, to make epic movies of ancient history, but they have bigger plans for it. What remains unexplained throughout is why it was able to be built on practically no money but couldn’t be repeated (except that it must have been) when they were wealthy; the ramble in the beginning about being unable to capitalize on it because he had no money showed very little imagination for someone who could imagine the machine.
Wilmar H. Shiras’s In Hiding tells about a child psychologist who happens upon a child who not only is a child prodigy, but who is so far above all other child prodigies that he has learned to hide his skills in order to avoid scaring the adults around him.
Oh, and he’s an orphan, living with his grandparents.
Cliff Simak’s The Big Front Yard is another of Simak’s tales of meeting alien races for the first time. An antiques dealer and fix-it man finds his home taken over by tiny, unknown creatures who seem to want to do nothing but help. Why are they there? And why him? It’s a typical Simak story in that nobody’s particularly evil and everyone is human.
Jack Vance’s The Moon Moth is probably the most unique space western I’ve ever read. His “sheriff” lands on a very strange world where everyone wears masks and speaks accompanied by musical instruments—a truly tonal language where different instruments drastically change the meaning of spoken/sung words.
This is the only one of these stories that I remember reading before, probably not because it’s the only one I’ve read before but because it is so memorable.
Want to read
October 3, 2011Gotta read this foundational series before matriculating to status of genuine sf geek. Two volumes down, one to go!
June 28, 2025
RATED 91% POSITIVE. STORY SCORE 4.4 OF 5
11 STORIES : 6 GREAT / 3 GOOD / 2 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 0 DNF
Arguably the best anthology series in science fiction history is The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Published in 3 Volumes: 1, 2A, & 2B. Most people only read Volume 1 which contains some of the genre’s greatest and everlasting stories, stories that with likely be preserved in part because of their inclusion in that anthology.
The Hall of Fame Volume 2 contained the novellas and was so large that it is almost always published as two volumes. I reviewed The Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A at 95% Positive - and even that was probably too harsh. Plenty of stories I rated as Good truly deserved a place on the Great list. https://www.shortsf.com/reviews/sfhof2a
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2B is another superb anthology, but is likely to contain stories that are new to most readers. While incurious modern readers will occasionally rub up against gender and social perspectives that don’t align with their preferences, most readers will find these stories mind expanding with a real sense of wonder.
More than half the stories are rated Great, so I’ll let you discover them within the body of the review below:
https://www.shortsf.com/beststories
***
THE SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME, VOLUME 2B
11 STORIES : 6 GREAT / 3 GOOD / 2 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 0 DNF
The Martian Way • (1952) • novelette by Isaac Asimov
Great. One of Asimov’s most epic and most human stories. The humans on Mars scrape out a living capturing Earth’s space junk using water propelled spaceships. Changing politics on Earth scapegoats the Spacers and threatens to remove their access to water, dooming Martian civilization. So a small team head to the rings of Saturn on a beautiful and dangerous mission to drag huge blocks of ice back to Mars.
Earthman, Come Home • [Cities in Flight] • (1953) • novelette by James Blish
Good. An ambitious piece of pulp about giant cities that travel across the universe and one that takes over from a nasty existing planetary government.
Rogue Moon • (1960) • novella by Algis Budrys
Average. The core SciFi concept here is great, but almost completely obliterated by horrible characters, badly written, that are annoying to be around, and dominate almost the novella’s entire world count. The cool idea is that an alien artifact has appeared on the moon and is being explored through the use of doppelgängers that share a mind. Each investigator dies and the person in the lab feels it, but each death gives more information to unlock the mystery path through.
The Specter General • (1952) • novella by Theodore R. Cogswell [as by Theodore Cogswell]
Average. A long story with a very slow start. The Space Marines - coded as native Americans - have spent a long time abandoned on a planet. They have kept their mission, to be expert repairmen for spaceships that never come. Through a series of errors, one marine ends up on the bridge of a Fleet Commander who wants to destroy life on the planet.
The Machine Stops • (1909) • novelette by E. M. Forster
Great. A superb vision of a world where all human experience is controlled by machines. People live in bowels of the earth, isolated from each other but swaddled in the care of the machine. Some rebel and are exiled to the earth’s surface.
The Midas Plague • (1954) • novella by Frederik Pohl
Great. In the future where the poor are forced into extreme consumption, one man finds an ingenious way out.
The Witches of Karres • [Karres] • (1949) • novelette by James H. Schmitz
Good. A Space Captain rescues three slave girls only to find out that they are witches with psychic powers. They get caught up in pulp adventures involving space pirates.
E for Effort • (1947) • novelette by T. L. Sherred
Great. Two men discover a device that lets them spy in on any time or space in all of human history. They use it to make a fortune in Hollywood movies, but when they try to use their device to end war…. that’s when things get challenging.
In Hiding • [Children of the Atom] • (1948) • novelette by Wilmar H. Shiras
Good. A psychiatrist becomes intrigued by a teenage boy who at first seems perfectly normal. Too normal. Slowly, he wins the teenager’s trust and discovers a secret. The boy has an enormous - almost inhuman - intelligence.
The Big Front Yard • (1958) • novella by Clifford D. Simak
Great. A simple repairman trader finds beings in his home that begin by fixing up broken technology and end by transforming his home into one of the world’s most important gateways. A true “sense of wonder” story.
The Moon Moth • (1961) • novelette by Jack Vance
Great. The title refers to a mask worn by the protagonist - a representative of the Home Planets - on the planet Sirene. Sirene has a complex and interesting culture. Masks are worn to represent one’s status. All conversations are sung, accompanied by various instruments that impart emotion and context to what is being said. Any breach in the etiquette can have very serious consequences. Jack Vance does a great job of bringing this society to life. This is culture building at a very high level. Within this context, Vance creates an interesting mystery as the protagonist needs to apprehend a criminal who has just arrived on the planet.
11 STORIES : 6 GREAT / 3 GOOD / 2 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 0 DNF
Arguably the best anthology series in science fiction history is The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Published in 3 Volumes: 1, 2A, & 2B. Most people only read Volume 1 which contains some of the genre’s greatest and everlasting stories, stories that with likely be preserved in part because of their inclusion in that anthology.
The Hall of Fame Volume 2 contained the novellas and was so large that it is almost always published as two volumes. I reviewed The Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A at 95% Positive - and even that was probably too harsh. Plenty of stories I rated as Good truly deserved a place on the Great list. https://www.shortsf.com/reviews/sfhof2a
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2B is another superb anthology, but is likely to contain stories that are new to most readers. While incurious modern readers will occasionally rub up against gender and social perspectives that don’t align with their preferences, most readers will find these stories mind expanding with a real sense of wonder.
More than half the stories are rated Great, so I’ll let you discover them within the body of the review below:
https://www.shortsf.com/beststories
***
THE SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME, VOLUME 2B
11 STORIES : 6 GREAT / 3 GOOD / 2 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 0 DNF
The Martian Way • (1952) • novelette by Isaac Asimov
Great. One of Asimov’s most epic and most human stories. The humans on Mars scrape out a living capturing Earth’s space junk using water propelled spaceships. Changing politics on Earth scapegoats the Spacers and threatens to remove their access to water, dooming Martian civilization. So a small team head to the rings of Saturn on a beautiful and dangerous mission to drag huge blocks of ice back to Mars.
Earthman, Come Home • [Cities in Flight] • (1953) • novelette by James Blish
Good. An ambitious piece of pulp about giant cities that travel across the universe and one that takes over from a nasty existing planetary government.
Rogue Moon • (1960) • novella by Algis Budrys
Average. The core SciFi concept here is great, but almost completely obliterated by horrible characters, badly written, that are annoying to be around, and dominate almost the novella’s entire world count. The cool idea is that an alien artifact has appeared on the moon and is being explored through the use of doppelgängers that share a mind. Each investigator dies and the person in the lab feels it, but each death gives more information to unlock the mystery path through.
The Specter General • (1952) • novella by Theodore R. Cogswell [as by Theodore Cogswell]
Average. A long story with a very slow start. The Space Marines - coded as native Americans - have spent a long time abandoned on a planet. They have kept their mission, to be expert repairmen for spaceships that never come. Through a series of errors, one marine ends up on the bridge of a Fleet Commander who wants to destroy life on the planet.
The Machine Stops • (1909) • novelette by E. M. Forster
Great. A superb vision of a world where all human experience is controlled by machines. People live in bowels of the earth, isolated from each other but swaddled in the care of the machine. Some rebel and are exiled to the earth’s surface.
The Midas Plague • (1954) • novella by Frederik Pohl
Great. In the future where the poor are forced into extreme consumption, one man finds an ingenious way out.
The Witches of Karres • [Karres] • (1949) • novelette by James H. Schmitz
Good. A Space Captain rescues three slave girls only to find out that they are witches with psychic powers. They get caught up in pulp adventures involving space pirates.
E for Effort • (1947) • novelette by T. L. Sherred
Great. Two men discover a device that lets them spy in on any time or space in all of human history. They use it to make a fortune in Hollywood movies, but when they try to use their device to end war…. that’s when things get challenging.
In Hiding • [Children of the Atom] • (1948) • novelette by Wilmar H. Shiras
Good. A psychiatrist becomes intrigued by a teenage boy who at first seems perfectly normal. Too normal. Slowly, he wins the teenager’s trust and discovers a secret. The boy has an enormous - almost inhuman - intelligence.
The Big Front Yard • (1958) • novella by Clifford D. Simak
Great. A simple repairman trader finds beings in his home that begin by fixing up broken technology and end by transforming his home into one of the world’s most important gateways. A true “sense of wonder” story.
The Moon Moth • (1961) • novelette by Jack Vance
Great. The title refers to a mask worn by the protagonist - a representative of the Home Planets - on the planet Sirene. Sirene has a complex and interesting culture. Masks are worn to represent one’s status. All conversations are sung, accompanied by various instruments that impart emotion and context to what is being said. Any breach in the etiquette can have very serious consequences. Jack Vance does a great job of bringing this society to life. This is culture building at a very high level. Within this context, Vance creates an interesting mystery as the protagonist needs to apprehend a criminal who has just arrived on the planet.
January 7, 2020
3.5 Stars It is not surprising that some of these stories are great. What is surprising is that not all of these stories are great. As noted in the intro these are twenty-two novellas published from 1895 to 1962 which were selected by vote of the Science Fiction Writers of America. And yet a number of these stories were pretty bad. Were the choices really that limited? Do tastes vary that much? I thought they were interesting from a historical perspective but didn't meet my expectations.
December 31, 2019
The odd thing about this book is that the stories were presented almost exactly in order from the ones I liked the best to the least. The Martian Way is brilliant. Moon Moth was still interesting, but difficult to read through, since the main character was so obnoxious. Overall, I liked these, but probably wouldn't reread.
December 30, 2020
This was very interesting, reading a collection of science fiction novellas, mostly from the 1950's, compiled in the 1970's. I got it so I could read "The Machine Stops", written by E.M. Forester in 1928, about a world where everyone stays in their room and communicates with the everyone else via "the machine". Seemed incredibly appropriate for 2020. But my favorite story was "The Midas Plague" where being poor means you need to consume constantly, and only the very rich can afford to not eat fancy food, wear fancy clothes, go to shows, live in large houses. Fascinating.
November 10, 2024
Fantastic!
August 2, 2009
A collection of the best SF novellas of the past 80 years. Some of my favorites from this collection include Algis Budrys's "Rogue Moon", E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops", and T. L. Sherred's "E For Effort".
July 29, 2008
Good stories, of Novella length, but not as good as Volume IIA.
May 19, 2019
??? childhood: ‘in hiding’ inspiration for ‘x-men’...
Want to read
July 19, 2010Volume II (Parts A and B) are "The Greatest Science Fiction Novellas of All Time".
Read
July 30, 2021Excellent as a collection, particularly as representative of the pre–Nebula Award era. As for the individual novellas ...
Isaac Asimov The Martian Way . My unusually long comment at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
James Blish Earthman, Come Home. Part of a long-running series collected in Earthman, Come Home and its companions. This one didn't strike me as the best of those I remembered ... but memory can be nostalgic.
Algis Budrys Rogue Moon, expanded to Rogue Moon . I think there's some element here that I'm just not getting, and may be constitutionally unable to get, because it seems to me the ending is screamingly unsatisfying--the wrong instance of the character gets the insight--and the SFWA voters obviously thought otherwise.
Theodore R. Cogswell, The Spectre General, covered here as The Spectre General: The Golden Age Science Fiction Classic . My tiny comment at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
E. M. Forster The Machine Stops . My minimal comment on this seminal work at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
Frederik Pohl The Midas Plague . The blurb reproduced there is illuminating. My little comment, with cross-reference, at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
James H. Schmitz The Witches of Karres, apparently expanded in The Witches of Karres . I highly recommend Ian Wright's analytical review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..., which I find applies nicely to the novella version.
TL Sherred, properly T. L., E For Effort . My comment, plus a comment attached to it, at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
Wilmar H. Shiras In Hiding . My minimal evaluation at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
Clifford D. Simak The Big Front Yard . The original magazine cover at the link is more interesting than my comment at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... Especially if, having read the novella, you know that that saddle is hovering in thin air.
Jack Vance The Moon Moth . My comment at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... should be taken as positive.
Isaac Asimov The Martian Way . My unusually long comment at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
James Blish Earthman, Come Home. Part of a long-running series collected in Earthman, Come Home and its companions. This one didn't strike me as the best of those I remembered ... but memory can be nostalgic.
Algis Budrys Rogue Moon, expanded to Rogue Moon . I think there's some element here that I'm just not getting, and may be constitutionally unable to get, because it seems to me the ending is screamingly unsatisfying--the wrong instance of the character gets the insight--and the SFWA voters obviously thought otherwise.
Theodore R. Cogswell, The Spectre General, covered here as The Spectre General: The Golden Age Science Fiction Classic . My tiny comment at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
E. M. Forster The Machine Stops . My minimal comment on this seminal work at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
Frederik Pohl The Midas Plague . The blurb reproduced there is illuminating. My little comment, with cross-reference, at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
James H. Schmitz The Witches of Karres, apparently expanded in The Witches of Karres . I highly recommend Ian Wright's analytical review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..., which I find applies nicely to the novella version.
TL Sherred, properly T. L., E For Effort . My comment, plus a comment attached to it, at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
Wilmar H. Shiras In Hiding . My minimal evaluation at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
Clifford D. Simak The Big Front Yard . The original magazine cover at the link is more interesting than my comment at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... Especially if, having read the novella, you know that that saddle is hovering in thin air.
Jack Vance The Moon Moth . My comment at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... should be taken as positive.
April 24, 2025
As with Volume IIA, collects longer stories voted for by the Science Fiction Writers of America in a sort of retro-Nebula poll of the late 1960s; an even more disorienting reading experience than that one, unfortunately. Volume I (same poll, short stories) is chronological, and affords the reader the chance to follow trends developing; IIA and IIB are alphabetical by authors in individual volume, and thus jump back and forwards in time, each with one grand proleptic outlier, and also jump back and forwards between novella as in short novel and novella as in long short story, though I'm not going to justify that beyond it's whatever gives a pedant an erection.
Asimov's 'The Martian Way' and Blish's 'Earthman, Come Home' open the volume with a weird illusion of coherency. Both of them are space-as-frontier stories. 'Martian Way' is a tight little thing that does that Golden Age 'present science problem / discover science solution' structure; Asimov is, as often, much better removed from the tedious superstructures of his Foundation and/or Robot stories. The Blish story is a section that at one point stood as the last of his 'Cities in Flight' stories, and is only just comprehensible on its own; it's a lot more complex than the Asimov in its ideas of what the frontier thing means.
These two are then followed by Algys Budrys's 'Rogue Moon', longer than the first two put together, which I had read previously in the slightly longer version later published as a novel. It's a semi-classic Big Dumb Object-adjacent story in which an Asimovian scientist-hero repeatedly teleports clones of a Heinleinish capable-man hero to die exploring a cave on the moon, while via (waves hands) his Earth-bound clone keeps his memories. Sadly a lot of it is trying to be about The Death Drive and How Men Find Ways To Be Men, Especially When Adjacent To Women; the bits with the Women whom Men are busy Being Adjacent To are insanely bad. I enjoyed the novel more, not because it was better, but because at that time I was watching The Venture Brothers, and every time the tiresome he-man deuteragonist spoke I heard it in the voice of Brock Samson.
Forster's 'The Machine Stops' (fantastic, but I'd just reread it in something else) is at pretty much the mid-point by page-count; on either side, the largely forgotten Theodore Cogswell's 'The Spectre General' before (very tiresome military SF comedy, with lots of description of things that might be funny if an actor were to be seen doing them in a way that was funny) and Frederick Pohl's 'The Midas Plague' after. This mean I read a lot of pages of mid-50s SF that was trying to be funny. Pohl can of course actually be funny, though I'd already seen Kingsley Amis quote all the good lines in this one; he chooses it as a prime example of what he calls the 'comic inferno' in New Maps of Hell, by which he means something like 'a story in which the SF idea is deployed satirically in a way that can't be reduced to allegory,' as far as I could tell. 'Midas,' a story that Galaxy's editor pestered his writers to write for him until Pohl did it to shut him up, is about a post-scarcity world where mores have shifted such that extreme over-consumption is mandatory for the lower classes, while the upper classes favour bare rooms and puritan diets. Well. Unfortunately it's mandatory as in legislated, largely to afford a plot-shape in which our protagonist realises the simple innovation which will solve things that the foolish bureaucrats have not yet come to. "You can't break a few eggs without making an omelette," though, good stuff.
Then we're back to a trawl through some names less discussed these days: James H. Schmitz's 'The Witches of Karres': enjoyable clevered-up space opera. Likewise Vance's 'The Moon Moth', the closer of the volume, though much more baroque. (The Schmitz story is, I guess, sort of about telepathy, but it might as well be magic; it feels a lot more down-to-earth than the Vance, which has nothing scientifically impossible, certainly, but imagines an alien sociolinguistics where everyone accompanies themselves on musical instruments while discoursing in poetic modes, and is also briefly a murder mystery.) Before that T.L. Sherred's 'E for Effort' is certainly not the worst story I've ever read about a remote time viewer, Wilmar H. Shiras's 'In Hiding' is definitely not the best story I've ever read about a coming generation of genius mutants, and Clifford D. Simak's 'The Big Front Yard' is absolutely one hundred per cent a Clifford Simak story. Most of these S authors warrant further investigation, probably; on the other hand, if I ever get my hands on a volume by Cogswell I will find a body of water to throw it into.
Asimov's 'The Martian Way' and Blish's 'Earthman, Come Home' open the volume with a weird illusion of coherency. Both of them are space-as-frontier stories. 'Martian Way' is a tight little thing that does that Golden Age 'present science problem / discover science solution' structure; Asimov is, as often, much better removed from the tedious superstructures of his Foundation and/or Robot stories. The Blish story is a section that at one point stood as the last of his 'Cities in Flight' stories, and is only just comprehensible on its own; it's a lot more complex than the Asimov in its ideas of what the frontier thing means.
These two are then followed by Algys Budrys's 'Rogue Moon', longer than the first two put together, which I had read previously in the slightly longer version later published as a novel. It's a semi-classic Big Dumb Object-adjacent story in which an Asimovian scientist-hero repeatedly teleports clones of a Heinleinish capable-man hero to die exploring a cave on the moon, while via (waves hands) his Earth-bound clone keeps his memories. Sadly a lot of it is trying to be about The Death Drive and How Men Find Ways To Be Men, Especially When Adjacent To Women; the bits with the Women whom Men are busy Being Adjacent To are insanely bad. I enjoyed the novel more, not because it was better, but because at that time I was watching The Venture Brothers, and every time the tiresome he-man deuteragonist spoke I heard it in the voice of Brock Samson.
Forster's 'The Machine Stops' (fantastic, but I'd just reread it in something else) is at pretty much the mid-point by page-count; on either side, the largely forgotten Theodore Cogswell's 'The Spectre General' before (very tiresome military SF comedy, with lots of description of things that might be funny if an actor were to be seen doing them in a way that was funny) and Frederick Pohl's 'The Midas Plague' after. This mean I read a lot of pages of mid-50s SF that was trying to be funny. Pohl can of course actually be funny, though I'd already seen Kingsley Amis quote all the good lines in this one; he chooses it as a prime example of what he calls the 'comic inferno' in New Maps of Hell, by which he means something like 'a story in which the SF idea is deployed satirically in a way that can't be reduced to allegory,' as far as I could tell. 'Midas,' a story that Galaxy's editor pestered his writers to write for him until Pohl did it to shut him up, is about a post-scarcity world where mores have shifted such that extreme over-consumption is mandatory for the lower classes, while the upper classes favour bare rooms and puritan diets. Well. Unfortunately it's mandatory as in legislated, largely to afford a plot-shape in which our protagonist realises the simple innovation which will solve things that the foolish bureaucrats have not yet come to. "You can't break a few eggs without making an omelette," though, good stuff.
Then we're back to a trawl through some names less discussed these days: James H. Schmitz's 'The Witches of Karres': enjoyable clevered-up space opera. Likewise Vance's 'The Moon Moth', the closer of the volume, though much more baroque. (The Schmitz story is, I guess, sort of about telepathy, but it might as well be magic; it feels a lot more down-to-earth than the Vance, which has nothing scientifically impossible, certainly, but imagines an alien sociolinguistics where everyone accompanies themselves on musical instruments while discoursing in poetic modes, and is also briefly a murder mystery.) Before that T.L. Sherred's 'E for Effort' is certainly not the worst story I've ever read about a remote time viewer, Wilmar H. Shiras's 'In Hiding' is definitely not the best story I've ever read about a coming generation of genius mutants, and Clifford D. Simak's 'The Big Front Yard' is absolutely one hundred per cent a Clifford Simak story. Most of these S authors warrant further investigation, probably; on the other hand, if I ever get my hands on a volume by Cogswell I will find a body of water to throw it into.
December 15, 2021
This book is part 2 of the best novellas prior to the nebula awards as voted on by the science fiction writers of America.
--------------
The Martian Way - Isaac Asimov
3.5 stars
An average story with a not very memorable plot. Ultimately forgettable.
----------
Earthman, Come Home - James Blish
4 stars
This story takes place in his Cities in Flight universe. I don't remember if this was part of the original novel or a stand alone story in the same universe.
Side note - I remember as a young kid coming home from the town library in Skowhegan, Maine with the hardcover edition of Cities in Flight. It was the early 70s, and I was probably 11, 12, or 13ish at the time. Cities in Flight was the first book I ever read that was on an adult reading level. Up until that point I had only read what today is called young adult books. Anyway, this book was a huge step up for me and I was absolutely captivated. And after that I could never go back to books aimed at younger readers. You always remember your first time, right?
----------
Rogue Moon - Algis Budrys
5 stars
Written in 1960, this is a story about investigating an alien artifact on the far side of the moon using human duplicates teleported from Earth. This story felt to me like a a stepping stone between those simpler science fiction stories of yore and the more sophisticated science fiction that came later in the mid sixties.
----------
The Spectre General - Theodore Cogwell
2 stars
F-Troop in space. A story written as a comedy probably best suited for a ten year old. This was a chore to get though. I was not amused.
----------
The Machine Stops - E. M. Forster
4.5 stars
A future society where mankind lives underground. Each individual lives in physical isolation (they still video chat) and all his or her needs are met by The Machine. As the years go on society begins to worship it. And then The Machine begins to break down.
Written in 1928, there are some uncanny parallels to today's reliance on the internet.
----------
The Midas Plague - Frederick Pohl
4 stars
Frederick Pohl, so I was thinking. This one is going to be really good. He always delivers. However, at first I did not like the premise of the story. The premise is that the world has an over abundance of robots that keep producing new things for humans, so society has changed to the point where the poorest are given the most to consume, and the richest don't have to consume as much. In other words, the poorest have big mansions and tons of things given to them and you earn the right to consume less over time thus becoming rich with a small house. I didn't like this story at all at first, but oddly enough it grew on me.
----------
The Witches of Karres - James H. Schmitz
2 stars
A silly story probably meant as a comedy. I did not enjoy this one at all.
That makes two comedies so far that I haven't liked. It's not that I have no sense of humor, it's just that the so-called funny stuff here is just sooooooo stupid.
(Think Dukes of Hazard, Boss Hogg)
----------
E For Effort - T. L. Sherred
4 stars
Interesting story. Not quite as engaging as some of the others.
----------
In Hiding - Wilmar H. Shiras
4 stars
This one feels like it could have been the premise for Good Will Hunting.
----------
The Big Front Yard - Clifford D. Simak
4 stars
I grew up on Clifford D. Simak books. This one is fun and typical of his books.
There are really no bad guys. Just a normal guy that gets caught up in events that are pretty alien to him.
----------
The Moon Moth - Jack Vance
4 stars
A mystery on another world where the protagonist has to work within the confines of an alien culture.
Moderately interesting.
----------
Conclusion:
Since these stories in Volume 2A and Volume 2B are presented more or less in a chronological order, I was hoping that this book (2B) had better quality stories than book 2A, as they were written much later. I really do question some of the choices of stories in both volumes. Some of them are good or even great, but some of them also are just not good and do not hold up to the test of time at all.
--------------
The Martian Way - Isaac Asimov
3.5 stars
An average story with a not very memorable plot. Ultimately forgettable.
----------
Earthman, Come Home - James Blish
4 stars
This story takes place in his Cities in Flight universe. I don't remember if this was part of the original novel or a stand alone story in the same universe.
Side note - I remember as a young kid coming home from the town library in Skowhegan, Maine with the hardcover edition of Cities in Flight. It was the early 70s, and I was probably 11, 12, or 13ish at the time. Cities in Flight was the first book I ever read that was on an adult reading level. Up until that point I had only read what today is called young adult books. Anyway, this book was a huge step up for me and I was absolutely captivated. And after that I could never go back to books aimed at younger readers. You always remember your first time, right?
----------
Rogue Moon - Algis Budrys
5 stars
Written in 1960, this is a story about investigating an alien artifact on the far side of the moon using human duplicates teleported from Earth. This story felt to me like a a stepping stone between those simpler science fiction stories of yore and the more sophisticated science fiction that came later in the mid sixties.
----------
The Spectre General - Theodore Cogwell
2 stars
F-Troop in space. A story written as a comedy probably best suited for a ten year old. This was a chore to get though. I was not amused.
----------
The Machine Stops - E. M. Forster
4.5 stars
A future society where mankind lives underground. Each individual lives in physical isolation (they still video chat) and all his or her needs are met by The Machine. As the years go on society begins to worship it. And then The Machine begins to break down.
Written in 1928, there are some uncanny parallels to today's reliance on the internet.
----------
The Midas Plague - Frederick Pohl
4 stars
Frederick Pohl, so I was thinking. This one is going to be really good. He always delivers. However, at first I did not like the premise of the story. The premise is that the world has an over abundance of robots that keep producing new things for humans, so society has changed to the point where the poorest are given the most to consume, and the richest don't have to consume as much. In other words, the poorest have big mansions and tons of things given to them and you earn the right to consume less over time thus becoming rich with a small house. I didn't like this story at all at first, but oddly enough it grew on me.
----------
The Witches of Karres - James H. Schmitz
2 stars
A silly story probably meant as a comedy. I did not enjoy this one at all.
That makes two comedies so far that I haven't liked. It's not that I have no sense of humor, it's just that the so-called funny stuff here is just sooooooo stupid.
(Think Dukes of Hazard, Boss Hogg)
----------
E For Effort - T. L. Sherred
4 stars
Interesting story. Not quite as engaging as some of the others.
----------
In Hiding - Wilmar H. Shiras
4 stars
This one feels like it could have been the premise for Good Will Hunting.
----------
The Big Front Yard - Clifford D. Simak
4 stars
I grew up on Clifford D. Simak books. This one is fun and typical of his books.
There are really no bad guys. Just a normal guy that gets caught up in events that are pretty alien to him.
----------
The Moon Moth - Jack Vance
4 stars
A mystery on another world where the protagonist has to work within the confines of an alien culture.
Moderately interesting.
----------
Conclusion:
Since these stories in Volume 2A and Volume 2B are presented more or less in a chronological order, I was hoping that this book (2B) had better quality stories than book 2A, as they were written much later. I really do question some of the choices of stories in both volumes. Some of them are good or even great, but some of them also are just not good and do not hold up to the test of time at all.
August 30, 2019
A lot of the books drop you into the action right away. They either require a second or third reading or some background information for you to get an understanding of the background.
The Martian Way - 4/5 Martians and other colonies suddenly learn they are being cut off from further supply shipments from earth. They brazenly go on a chance expedition to recover a new source of essential supplies. It hasn't aged as well as the other books but it's spirit is unquestionable.
Earthman, Come Home (1953) by James Blish 2/5 Someone unsettling as you are dumped into the 3rd stories in the series without any foundation. It even feels like you are in the latter half of a novel. You miss the information that spindizzys (anti-gravity devices) have propelled cities (Okies) into the galaxy.
Rogue Moon (1960) by Algis Budrys 4/5 The characterization of women is painfully outdated. At one point a man calls a woman his by right of conquest. Then he smacks her down to the ground, and she comes nuzzling him to his thighs proclaiming how manly he is. Women seem to be only there for men. I was honestly wondering if the author had even gone on a date with a woman. It could be argued that he conveyed women this way to explore themes of the meaning of masculinity and the purpose of life.
The Specter General (1952) by Theodore Cogswell 5/5 Great fun. A preposterous, but thoroughly enjoyable space adventure.
The Machine Stops (1909) by E.M. Forster 5/5 Foundational dystopian story about reliance on machines.
The Midas Plague (1954) by Frederik Pohl 5/5
The Witches of Karres (1949) by James H. Schmitz 5/5 Another story that is part in a series. Luckily, this is the first one in the series, so you are not lacking for information. If you like it, then you should read the novel and maybe the rest of the series.
E for Effort (1947) by T.L. Sherred 5/5 I had to reread the first few pages several times to get a grasp on the layout for story. Very good overall.
In Hiding (1948) by Wilmar H. Shiras 5/5 One of the first in the series, good starting point.
The Big Front Yard (1958) by Clifford D. Simak 5/5
The Moon Moth (1961) by Jack Vance 4/5
The Martian Way - 4/5 Martians and other colonies suddenly learn they are being cut off from further supply shipments from earth. They brazenly go on a chance expedition to recover a new source of essential supplies. It hasn't aged as well as the other books but it's spirit is unquestionable.
Earthman, Come Home (1953) by James Blish 2/5 Someone unsettling as you are dumped into the 3rd stories in the series without any foundation. It even feels like you are in the latter half of a novel. You miss the information that spindizzys (anti-gravity devices) have propelled cities (Okies) into the galaxy.
Rogue Moon (1960) by Algis Budrys 4/5 The characterization of women is painfully outdated. At one point a man calls a woman his by right of conquest. Then he smacks her down to the ground, and she comes nuzzling him to his thighs proclaiming how manly he is. Women seem to be only there for men. I was honestly wondering if the author had even gone on a date with a woman. It could be argued that he conveyed women this way to explore themes of the meaning of masculinity and the purpose of life.
The Specter General (1952) by Theodore Cogswell 5/5 Great fun. A preposterous, but thoroughly enjoyable space adventure.
The Machine Stops (1909) by E.M. Forster 5/5 Foundational dystopian story about reliance on machines.
The Midas Plague (1954) by Frederik Pohl 5/5
The Witches of Karres (1949) by James H. Schmitz 5/5 Another story that is part in a series. Luckily, this is the first one in the series, so you are not lacking for information. If you like it, then you should read the novel and maybe the rest of the series.
E for Effort (1947) by T.L. Sherred 5/5 I had to reread the first few pages several times to get a grasp on the layout for story. Very good overall.
In Hiding (1948) by Wilmar H. Shiras 5/5 One of the first in the series, good starting point.
The Big Front Yard (1958) by Clifford D. Simak 5/5
The Moon Moth (1961) by Jack Vance 4/5
November 14, 2018
This Volume is the weakest of the three. I was not interested in a majority of the stories in this compilation, and I found it difficult to finish.
Four stories stood out to me: Martian Way by Isaac Asimov, Earthman Come Home by James Blish, E for Effort by T. L. Sherred, and In Hiding by Wilmar H. Shiras. These stories saved this from being two stars. I particulary enjoyed the political quibble in Martian Way and feel it's somewhat in relevant today's political climate.
Other stories had potential like The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster, however I felt the story was underdeveloped. If it had furthered the backstory of the technologically coddled human race and its infant like intellectual state, it could have been the dichotomic rival of Ayn Rand's Anthem. As is, it fell short of the individualist point and half-baked the religion of the machine.
Then there were stories I just had to grit my teeth and power through: Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys and The Big Front Yard by Clifford D. Simak. Rogue Moon seemed to go on forever. That was the story that would not end. And when it did, it wasn't a real ending! The rest of the shorts were "eh" and not that memorable.
In the end, I think it's worth listening to, but feel free to skip around. It is my foibal that I must read something straight through, cover to cover, or listen via audiobook to every chapter. Don't follow in my footsteps!
Four stories stood out to me: Martian Way by Isaac Asimov, Earthman Come Home by James Blish, E for Effort by T. L. Sherred, and In Hiding by Wilmar H. Shiras. These stories saved this from being two stars. I particulary enjoyed the political quibble in Martian Way and feel it's somewhat in relevant today's political climate.
Other stories had potential like The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster, however I felt the story was underdeveloped. If it had furthered the backstory of the technologically coddled human race and its infant like intellectual state, it could have been the dichotomic rival of Ayn Rand's Anthem. As is, it fell short of the individualist point and half-baked the religion of the machine.
Then there were stories I just had to grit my teeth and power through: Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys and The Big Front Yard by Clifford D. Simak. Rogue Moon seemed to go on forever. That was the story that would not end. And when it did, it wasn't a real ending! The rest of the shorts were "eh" and not that memorable.
In the end, I think it's worth listening to, but feel free to skip around. It is my foibal that I must read something straight through, cover to cover, or listen via audiobook to every chapter. Don't follow in my footsteps!
December 8, 2025
We read the first half of these novellas in December 2024, and the second half in December 2025 SFF book club.
Not going to recap the first few ones, because the only one I remember clearly is The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster.
------------------------------
December 2025
The Midas Plague - Frederik Pohl - Hated it. Absolutely heavy-handed satire. Too heavy.
The Witches of Karres - James H. Schmitz - Cute. 4 females with various powers & aren't afraid to use them.
E for Effort - T.L. Sherred - Ideas of changing the world don't work out the way a pair of inventors hope they will. Involves a machine that can see through time.
In Hiding - William H. Shiras - One of those mutations-will-change-the-world stories, and a regular human who will be happy to be their dog.
The Big Front Yard - Clifford D. Simak - read this before. Aliens decide to make earth a part of an interlocking transport network. When the currency is ideas, you need a good dickerer to get the best deal.
The Moon Moth - Jack Vance - My favorite of this bunch. Very strange mixture of masks/musical instruments/culture clashes. Typically strange Vance. That's one of the reasons I like him.
Not going to recap the first few ones, because the only one I remember clearly is The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster.
------------------------------
December 2025
The Midas Plague - Frederik Pohl - Hated it. Absolutely heavy-handed satire. Too heavy.
The Witches of Karres - James H. Schmitz - Cute. 4 females with various powers & aren't afraid to use them.
E for Effort - T.L. Sherred - Ideas of changing the world don't work out the way a pair of inventors hope they will. Involves a machine that can see through time.
In Hiding - William H. Shiras - One of those mutations-will-change-the-world stories, and a regular human who will be happy to be their dog.
The Big Front Yard - Clifford D. Simak - read this before. Aliens decide to make earth a part of an interlocking transport network. When the currency is ideas, you need a good dickerer to get the best deal.
The Moon Moth - Jack Vance - My favorite of this bunch. Very strange mixture of masks/musical instruments/culture clashes. Typically strange Vance. That's one of the reasons I like him.
October 18, 2020
This book deserves a four not because all the stories are good - far from it. But a few are wonderful, and overall it’s a very interesting view into a kind of short sci fi stories that don’t get written much anymore.
Here are the notably good stories:
The Spectre General by Theodore Cogswell, incredibly funny with very likable characters.
E for Effort by T L Sherred, for a grim take on the government and the desire of those in power to preserve that power, told with via an interesting device I’ve never seen described before.
The Big Front Yard by Clifford D Simak, for an incredibly personable main character and a hilarious tone. How can you not root for the guy who just wants to make sure his dog is ok as he has the craziest day of all time?
The rest all have varying degrees of serious problems, from raging sexism to situations that are so over the top and nonsensical it makes it no fun to read.
Overall, an enjoyable view into the world of sci fi magazines and some of the best short stories of another era. Even when a story is bad, at least it’s only sixty pages.
Here are the notably good stories:
The Spectre General by Theodore Cogswell, incredibly funny with very likable characters.
E for Effort by T L Sherred, for a grim take on the government and the desire of those in power to preserve that power, told with via an interesting device I’ve never seen described before.
The Big Front Yard by Clifford D Simak, for an incredibly personable main character and a hilarious tone. How can you not root for the guy who just wants to make sure his dog is ok as he has the craziest day of all time?
The rest all have varying degrees of serious problems, from raging sexism to situations that are so over the top and nonsensical it makes it no fun to read.
Overall, an enjoyable view into the world of sci fi magazines and some of the best short stories of another era. Even when a story is bad, at least it’s only sixty pages.
September 6, 2016
This collection, edited by Ben Bova, is actually broken into two books. This volume contains eleven short novels and the other has thirteen.
The first story, "The Martian Way," by Isaac Asimov, has me dumbfounded. Not because it's confusing or intricate, but because I can't understand how this story is the one chosen to represent the work of possibly the greatest science-fiction writer of all time. It's a counter-environmentalist piece about Martian scavengers who heroically journey to Saturn's rings in order to return with a mile-long chunk of ice, thereby shoving Earth's water embargo in its face and ensuring new life, a future, and preservation of the Martian way of life. Politics and rebellion in the galactic colonization era.
The second novella is "Earthman, Come Home" by James Blish. Mildly interesting story about flying colonial cities by an author I had no prior knowledge of. Started to really doubt the validity of this book's "Greatest... of All Time" claim.
Third story, "Rogue Moon," by Budrys, is about as sci-fi as "Flowers for Algernon," and almost as good.
The fourth story is probably the worst in the book, and easily one of the dumbest novellas I've ever bothered to finish. Theodore Cogswell's "The Spectre General" reads like the novelization of a Marvin the Martian cartoon.
The fifth entry in this collection doesn't seem to fit -- because it's brilliant. E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops," written in 1909, is much more than an early tale of a post-apocalyptic Earth. It's a revelation, and points to Forster as one of the preeminent futurists of the twentieth century.
I have no doubt that the idea of humanity living below ground, reverentially linked to The Machine, was a tremendous influence on the Wachowski Bros' Matrix. But the haunting prescience goes beyond that.
Communicating as one always does, via The Machine, a son tells his mother, "The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you." The impersonal dehumanization of social media.
The modern "productive" era is foretold in the mother's frustration: "she replied with irritation -- a growing quality in that accelerated age... she had no ideas of her own..." The concept of only "knowing" what someone else tells you is underscored while looking out a window during her air-ship trip: "'No ideas here,' and hid Greece behind a metal blind."
The Machine, worshipped to the point of religiosity, is our submission to technology, and virtual substitutions for reality. Real contact is referred to more than once as "terrors of direct experience." In fact, "People never touched one another. The custom had become obsolete, owing to The Machine."
Even the modern evolution of amateur information peddlers, from bloggers to WikiAuthors is eerily prophesied. "Let your ideas be secondhand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be removed from that disturbing element -- direct observation."
And in the story's climax, one of the most beautifully tragic sentences ever written: "Man, the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures visible, man who had once made god in his image, and had mirrored his strength on the constellations, beautiful naked man was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven."
The next story is pretty good: "The Midas Plague" by Frederick Pohl. It's a fairly clever response to skyrocketing capitalism and overproduction in the mid-twentieth century. In this future, ration books are used to chart that you consume your required quota. The wealthiest, most prominent of citizens "get" to live in small houses and don't have to eat, wear, or use up their goods with regularity. Our duty, in the future, is to do nothing but consume.
Theft is unthinkable, since no one wants to have more stuff; wedding gifts are exchanged in reverse; and the subversives plot ways to have civilization's legion of robots covertly consume the very goods they produce. "Adjustable satisfaction of circuits..." Is that what the twentieth century has created of us? "...satisfaction from possession, and the craving can be regulated according to the glut in various industries..."
Next up, another stupid story. "The Witches of Karres" by James H. Schmitz seems to prove that inane mediocrity is the norm in this anthology, and gems like the Forster story are exceptions.
But the next novella is somewhat redemptive. "E for Effort" by T.L. Sherred is the second-best in the book. A time-travel story (somewhat) that is part Jack Finney's "Third Level" and part Philip K. Dick paranoia. Mixed in is a heavy dose of social responsibility and second-guessing of world governments that would make Howard Zinn proud. And, to my surprise, it was first published in 1947.
"In Hiding" by Wilmar H. Shiras is a 1948 story of "positive" radiation effects on mutated births, and was probably more influential in the long run than meritorious in its own right. Stan Lee probably read it before dreaming up The X-Men.
"The Big Front Yard" could have been an interesting piece on government involvement in the extraterrestrial, but then it just ends, abruptly. This, after far too much build-up.
Finally, "The Moon Moth" by Jack Vance is like a campy sci-fi predecessor to The Usual Suspects, but, again, could have been much more if Vance had developed his Sirenese mythos -- prestige-based, perpetually masked society where communication must be accompanied by the appropriate selection from at least a half-dozen different hand instruments.
But it was good enough for me to take note of the author... and, as luck, would have it, The Box Under the Stairs contained an entire novel by Jack Vance.
The first story, "The Martian Way," by Isaac Asimov, has me dumbfounded. Not because it's confusing or intricate, but because I can't understand how this story is the one chosen to represent the work of possibly the greatest science-fiction writer of all time. It's a counter-environmentalist piece about Martian scavengers who heroically journey to Saturn's rings in order to return with a mile-long chunk of ice, thereby shoving Earth's water embargo in its face and ensuring new life, a future, and preservation of the Martian way of life. Politics and rebellion in the galactic colonization era.
The second novella is "Earthman, Come Home" by James Blish. Mildly interesting story about flying colonial cities by an author I had no prior knowledge of. Started to really doubt the validity of this book's "Greatest... of All Time" claim.
Third story, "Rogue Moon," by Budrys, is about as sci-fi as "Flowers for Algernon," and almost as good.
The fourth story is probably the worst in the book, and easily one of the dumbest novellas I've ever bothered to finish. Theodore Cogswell's "The Spectre General" reads like the novelization of a Marvin the Martian cartoon.
The fifth entry in this collection doesn't seem to fit -- because it's brilliant. E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops," written in 1909, is much more than an early tale of a post-apocalyptic Earth. It's a revelation, and points to Forster as one of the preeminent futurists of the twentieth century.
I have no doubt that the idea of humanity living below ground, reverentially linked to The Machine, was a tremendous influence on the Wachowski Bros' Matrix. But the haunting prescience goes beyond that.
Communicating as one always does, via The Machine, a son tells his mother, "The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you." The impersonal dehumanization of social media.
The modern "productive" era is foretold in the mother's frustration: "she replied with irritation -- a growing quality in that accelerated age... she had no ideas of her own..." The concept of only "knowing" what someone else tells you is underscored while looking out a window during her air-ship trip: "'No ideas here,' and hid Greece behind a metal blind."
The Machine, worshipped to the point of religiosity, is our submission to technology, and virtual substitutions for reality. Real contact is referred to more than once as "terrors of direct experience." In fact, "People never touched one another. The custom had become obsolete, owing to The Machine."
Even the modern evolution of amateur information peddlers, from bloggers to WikiAuthors is eerily prophesied. "Let your ideas be secondhand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be removed from that disturbing element -- direct observation."
And in the story's climax, one of the most beautifully tragic sentences ever written: "Man, the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures visible, man who had once made god in his image, and had mirrored his strength on the constellations, beautiful naked man was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven."
The next story is pretty good: "The Midas Plague" by Frederick Pohl. It's a fairly clever response to skyrocketing capitalism and overproduction in the mid-twentieth century. In this future, ration books are used to chart that you consume your required quota. The wealthiest, most prominent of citizens "get" to live in small houses and don't have to eat, wear, or use up their goods with regularity. Our duty, in the future, is to do nothing but consume.
Theft is unthinkable, since no one wants to have more stuff; wedding gifts are exchanged in reverse; and the subversives plot ways to have civilization's legion of robots covertly consume the very goods they produce. "Adjustable satisfaction of circuits..." Is that what the twentieth century has created of us? "...satisfaction from possession, and the craving can be regulated according to the glut in various industries..."
Next up, another stupid story. "The Witches of Karres" by James H. Schmitz seems to prove that inane mediocrity is the norm in this anthology, and gems like the Forster story are exceptions.
But the next novella is somewhat redemptive. "E for Effort" by T.L. Sherred is the second-best in the book. A time-travel story (somewhat) that is part Jack Finney's "Third Level" and part Philip K. Dick paranoia. Mixed in is a heavy dose of social responsibility and second-guessing of world governments that would make Howard Zinn proud. And, to my surprise, it was first published in 1947.
"In Hiding" by Wilmar H. Shiras is a 1948 story of "positive" radiation effects on mutated births, and was probably more influential in the long run than meritorious in its own right. Stan Lee probably read it before dreaming up The X-Men.
"The Big Front Yard" could have been an interesting piece on government involvement in the extraterrestrial, but then it just ends, abruptly. This, after far too much build-up.
Finally, "The Moon Moth" by Jack Vance is like a campy sci-fi predecessor to The Usual Suspects, but, again, could have been much more if Vance had developed his Sirenese mythos -- prestige-based, perpetually masked society where communication must be accompanied by the appropriate selection from at least a half-dozen different hand instruments.
But it was good enough for me to take note of the author... and, as luck, would have it, The Box Under the Stairs contained an entire novel by Jack Vance.
May 8, 2024
Of the three Hall of Fame volumes available on Audible.com, this one just doesn't seem to work. Unlike Volume 1 and 2A, these tales do not evoke the sense of wonder of the era. My favorite of the collection is "Rogue Moon" by Algis Budrys. I was so impressed by the writing, characters and originality (for its time) that I am going to be looking up Budrys's other works to see if I've found a new author to explore.
Having said all of that, I should add that I am really picky about science fiction. I do not like dystopias, space opera, geopolitical epics or military science fiction, and so that rules out a huge swath of the genre for me. I like tales set in the present day (or a period piece) with ordinary characters confronting something bizarre.
If you're a completist, you should probably read this volume, as well as Volume 3, which is not on audio to my knowledge.
Okay, I am now going to go transmogrify myself into a noble mammal.
Having said all of that, I should add that I am really picky about science fiction. I do not like dystopias, space opera, geopolitical epics or military science fiction, and so that rules out a huge swath of the genre for me. I like tales set in the present day (or a period piece) with ordinary characters confronting something bizarre.
If you're a completist, you should probably read this volume, as well as Volume 3, which is not on audio to my knowledge.
Okay, I am now going to go transmogrify myself into a noble mammal.
October 25, 2018
Volume 2B of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame contains 11 novellas from before the age of the Nebula Award. All were published between 1909 and 1961. Because of their age they suffer from the fact technology has moved on since they were written, but that doesn't distract from the stories, most of which were excellent and those that weren't were very good. The plots seem to be very original. A number of the stories had me thinking had I ever heard of anything similar, but I simply couldn't.
The Authors range from the well known Isaac Asimov and Fred Pohl to ones I hadn't heard of T. L. Sherrad and Wilmar H. Shiras and many others I was familiar with to varying degrees.
Overall a very good read, well worth the time spent.
The Authors range from the well known Isaac Asimov and Fred Pohl to ones I hadn't heard of T. L. Sherrad and Wilmar H. Shiras and many others I was familiar with to varying degrees.
Overall a very good read, well worth the time spent.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews