Orbit 3

Orbit #3

by Damon Knight

Imagination times nine
Here is the third all-original, award-winning selection in Damon Knight's series of Orbit SF anthologies. It features visions, speculations and nightmares by
Richard Wilson*
Kate Wilhelm*
Philip José Farmer
Richard McKenna
Joanna Russ
John Jakes
Gene Wolfe
James Sallis
Doris Pitkin Buck
The result is science fiction at its thought-provoking, adventurous best.
* The contributions by Richard Wilson and Kate Wilhelm in Orbit 3 won the year's Nebula Awards for the best novelette and best short story respectively.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies

189 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1967

About the author

Damon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, and critic.
Knight's first professional sale was a cartoon drawing to a science-fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. His first story, "Resilience", was published in 1941. He is best known as the author of "To Serve Man", which was adapted for The Twilight Zone. He was a recipient of the Hugo Award, founder of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), cofounder of the National Fantasy Fan Federation, cofounder of the Milford Writer's Workshop, and cofounder of the Clarion Writers Workshop. Knight lived in Eugene, Oregon, with his wife Kate Wilhelm.

Reviews

[Ed]

ISFDB 185601. OCLC 41155987.

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've read about 10 of the Orbits, and this was by far the worst. Most of the stories either don't make sense, or lack a conclusion. The only bits worth reading were Knight's introductions for each story. He'd soon stop. This was one of the shortest Orbits ... fortunately.

Goodreads claims that there's illustrations to this, but I didn't see any.

Selections:

* "Mother to the World" by Richard Wilson. I wound up skimming this Last Two People on Earth novella because, as an animal lover, it was horrifying. All of the billions of animals dying of starvation while these two are watching Fellini films for days on end. Shooting caged animals in Central Park Zoo. As a horror show, this was effective, but I'm off to vomit now.
* "Bramble Bush" by Richard McKenna. As Knight's introduction describes, this is the last story of McKenna's to be published, with minor edits by Knight. McKenna died a few years earlier. That being said, this novella was a fucking awful mess that should've been left for the termites. It makes no sense -- but it does have a goat-like alien get eaten alive. Oh, joy.
* "The Barbarian" by Joanna Russ. This the third of the Alyx story series, where a small woman plays the part of Conan the Barbarian. This is dreary stuff. It took a few pages, but I remembered reading this in another anthology, so declined to read this crap again.
* "The Changeling" by Gene Wolfe. Knight admits that he doesn't understand this story -- and yet paid for and published it, anyway. WARNING: A frog is killed by a kid with a knife.
* "Why They Mobbed the White House" by Doris Pitkin Buck. This was written by a senior citizen who dabbled in writing -- and it shows. This was AWFUL. It was a cute idea that people become allergic to doing their taxes, but it wound up sputtering out into nothing.
* "The Planners" by Kate Wilhelm/Mrs. Damon Knight. This inhumane experiment with hundreds of primates (including people) has no resolution. Sad to read about what the Florida environment used to be like. Yeah, so this crap won a Hugo -- which only goes to show you how bad sci-fi was in 1967.
* "Don't Wash the Carats" by Philip Jose Farmer. Knight states that this "story" is like an ink blot test, where everybody sees different things. I see that Knight got robbed when he paid Farmer for this, but the real victims are the readers.
* "Letter to a Young Poet" by James Sallis. This was apparently one of Sallis' first stories. It actually makes sense. Makes you wonder what happened to him later.
* "Here is Thy Sting" by John Jakes. Knight said that this novella was funny. Perhaps he meant "peculiar", because this certainly isn't "ha, ha." This was depressing as hell ... well, the understandable bits, anyway.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

Orbit 3 contains both masterpieces (by Gene Wolfe and Kate Wilhelm) and complete duds (by Doris Pitkin Buck and Philip José Farmer). Damon Knight’s willingness to select a range of known and lesser known authors creates an enjoyable and unpredictable reading experience—but, most of the greats [...]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

[Perry Middlemiss · Rating 3 out of 5]

The third in this continuing series of original story anthologies edited by Damon Knight. This volume includes two Nebula Award winners: “Mother to the World” by Richard Wilson (novelette) and “The Planners” by Kate Wilhelm (short story). The Wilhelm was fine but the Wilson was just ordinary. In his introduction to that story Knight describes it as “not just a new variation on the Last Man theme; he has given it one new twist”. A new twist it may be, but it still doesn’t make it any good. Apart from the Wilhelm I liked Gene Wolfe’s “The Changeling”, Joanna Russ’s “The Barbarian” (one of her stories about Alyx, the thief and swordswoman) and James Sallis’s “Letter to a Young Poet”, which uses an sf set-up to tell a story that might just as easily have been written as a straight literary story, and does it very well. That gives the anthology four starred stories out of nine, putting it into the middle range of such volumes. Why Knight even bothered choosing Philip Jose Farmer’s “Don’t Wash the Carats” is beyond me. Maybe I’m becoming a bit biased about Farmer, but the more I read the more I wonder what people saw in his work. R: 2.6/5.0