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World's Best Science Fiction #5
World's Best Science Fiction, 1969
Contents:
* Introduction by Donald Wollheim and Terry Carr (editors)
* Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay by Robert Sheckley
* Backtracked by Burt Filer
* Kyrie by Poul Anderson
* Going Down Smooth by Robert Silverberg
* The Worm That Flies by Brian W. Aldiss
* Masks by Damon Knight
* Time Considered As a Helix of Semi-precious Stones by Samuel R. Delany
* Hemeac by E.G. Von Wald
* The Cloudbuilders by Colin Kapp
* The Grand Carcass by R.A. Lafferty
* A Visit to Cleveland General by Sydney Van Scyoc
* The Selchey Kids by Laurence Yep
* Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
* The Dance of the Changer and the Three by Terry Carr
* Sword Game by H.H. Hollis
* Total Environment by Brian W. Aldiss
* The Square Root of Brain by Fritz Leiber
* Starsong by Fred Saberhagen
* Fear Hound by Katherine MacLean
* Introduction by Donald Wollheim and Terry Carr (editors)
* Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay by Robert Sheckley
* Backtracked by Burt Filer
* Kyrie by Poul Anderson
* Going Down Smooth by Robert Silverberg
* The Worm That Flies by Brian W. Aldiss
* Masks by Damon Knight
* Time Considered As a Helix of Semi-precious Stones by Samuel R. Delany
* Hemeac by E.G. Von Wald
* The Cloudbuilders by Colin Kapp
* The Grand Carcass by R.A. Lafferty
* A Visit to Cleveland General by Sydney Van Scyoc
* The Selchey Kids by Laurence Yep
* Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
* The Dance of the Changer and the Three by Terry Carr
* Sword Game by H.H. Hollis
* Total Environment by Brian W. Aldiss
* The Square Root of Brain by Fritz Leiber
* Starsong by Fred Saberhagen
* Fear Hound by Katherine MacLean
380 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
3 people are currently reading
193 people want to read
About the author
Brian W. Aldiss
834 books673 followersPseudonyms: Jael Cracken, Peter Pica, John Runciman, C.C. Shackleton, Arch Mendicant, & "Doc" Peristyle.
Brian Wilson Aldiss was one of the most important voices in science fiction writing today. He wrote his first novel while working as a bookseller in Oxford. Shortly afterwards he wrote his first work of science fiction and soon gained international recognition. Adored for his innovative literary techniques, evocative plots and irresistible characters, he became a Grand Master of Science Fiction in 1999.
Brian Aldiss died on August 19, 2017, just after celebrating his 92nd birthday with his family and closest friends.
Brian W. Aldiss Group on Good Reads
Brian Wilson Aldiss was one of the most important voices in science fiction writing today. He wrote his first novel while working as a bookseller in Oxford. Shortly afterwards he wrote his first work of science fiction and soon gained international recognition. Adored for his innovative literary techniques, evocative plots and irresistible characters, he became a Grand Master of Science Fiction in 1999.
Brian Aldiss died on August 19, 2017, just after celebrating his 92nd birthday with his family and closest friends.
Brian W. Aldiss Group on Good Reads
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 29, 2024
This has no less than five great stories :
Kyrie by Poul Anderson
The Worm that Flies by Brian W Aldiss
Going Down Smooth by Robert Silverberg
Masks by Damon Knight
The Dance of the Changer and the Three by Terry Carr
The third and the fourth of those are very paranoid, the second and the fifth are very weird and the first one is a wow.
Kyrie by Poul Anderson
The Worm that Flies by Brian W Aldiss
Going Down Smooth by Robert Silverberg
Masks by Damon Knight
The Dance of the Changer and the Three by Terry Carr
The third and the fourth of those are very paranoid, the second and the fifth are very weird and the first one is a wow.
June 10, 2021
This book is the annual anthology for 1968 that Carr and Wollheim selected as the best short science fiction stories that appeared in that year. It's a longer volume than the previous ones, and overall I thought it was one of the weakest. Some of the stories seem slight and pedestrian, and I believe they could have made some much better picks. Most were enjoyable, but not what I'd call outstanding. I thought the Robert Silverberg and Robert Sheckley stories were good, as well as editor Carr's own The Dance of the Changer and the Three and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s Welcome to the Monkey House. My favorite was Samuel R. Delany's Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones.
April 6, 2018
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2987569.html
I don't always get on with Delany's writing, and this is a good example of a story that I admire but don't especially like. The protagonist is a professional criminal in a near-future society who goes by many different aliases, all of which have the initials H.C.E. (this is a lift from Finnegan's Wake, apparently). Two of the other characters share a name, Hawk the Singer and Arty the Hawk, a mafia don. The story is pinned by two encounters with security agent Maud Hinkle (though who knows if that is really her name). The semi-precious stones of the title are code-words among the criminal underworld, changed every month.
There is a particularly gorgeous party scene near the beginning, and later on some juicy incidental detail and innuendo about what may be really going on; it's not too difficult to read a lot of aspects of the story as reflecting the underground gay scene in the pre-Stonewall period. Delany's writing style sparkles but also has hidden depths; however, I don't see a lot of substance here - no plot, really, and little character development. Clearly he caught the Zeitgeist of the sf scene, given the story's award-winning success against strong competition.
I don't always get on with Delany's writing, and this is a good example of a story that I admire but don't especially like. The protagonist is a professional criminal in a near-future society who goes by many different aliases, all of which have the initials H.C.E. (this is a lift from Finnegan's Wake, apparently). Two of the other characters share a name, Hawk the Singer and Arty the Hawk, a mafia don. The story is pinned by two encounters with security agent Maud Hinkle (though who knows if that is really her name). The semi-precious stones of the title are code-words among the criminal underworld, changed every month.
There is a particularly gorgeous party scene near the beginning, and later on some juicy incidental detail and innuendo about what may be really going on; it's not too difficult to read a lot of aspects of the story as reflecting the underground gay scene in the pre-Stonewall period. Delany's writing style sparkles but also has hidden depths; however, I don't see a lot of substance here - no plot, really, and little character development. Clearly he caught the Zeitgeist of the sf scene, given the story's award-winning success against strong competition.
March 6, 2020
This is an anthology of science fiction, with 19 stories from different authors.
Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay
One person, Carmody, leaves his place in New York City to explore a state-of-the-art city in New Jersey. (Some would say this was his first problem.)
The city is named Bellwether. It is an Artificial Intelligence city, so it talks with Carmody.
Bellwether is deserted, though it used to have more people in it.
As Carmody stays for about three days (maybe more, maybe less), he realizes why the others left and then leaves himself.
Backtracked
In this short story, a person is able to go back to a particular point in time, but they have no memory of why they came back to that particular point. Spencer had been affected by polio, but his physical appearance had changed from thin and weak to buff and strong. He woke up by his wife. They got ready for a picnic, gotten to by bikes. At the picnic, Spencer was able to save his wife from falling off a cliff, but he broke his bad leg in the process, placing him back in the same position as his leg never fully healed.
Kyrie
On a spaceship headed to observe a star exploding.
A psychic and a Flame are connected telepathically.
When the ship is endangered, the Flame sacrifices himself to save the ship.
Going down Smooth (Separate book)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Worm that Flies
On a world where "change" is contemplated, an ape-human moves to collect rocks to complete his parapatterner. He finishes his journey. He finishes his project, and is haunted by the words that include "the worm that flies". There is no remembrance anymore, change is alien, and things just continue as they have been.
He threatens a crow beggar, who explains that many years ago, the formula for eternal life was placed in everything and now, as the universe outside is winding down and expiring, everyone is understanding that they were once children (no children exist now), and that their everlasting life will also wind down and they will expire. They remember death.
Masks formerly published in Playboy magazine
In a world where prosthetics are used and nothing is unusual about them, this story explores what happens if (or when) one's entire body is replaced. The subject is in a body that is more machine and he has some companionship He presents alternative bodies to those in charge, and posits that he can do space exploration because he doesn't need oxygen.
Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones
In this world of texting and automatic or mechanized communication, the criminal underground has to use different means of communicating. One of those ways is a passcode based on a semi-precious stone. There are also "Singers", people who have the ability to sing and gain people's attention to the exclusion of anything around them.
Our protagonist was an orphan, who first worked on a dairy farm. These are not free range cows; these are "induced semi-coma cows" whose only production is the milk. Our protagonist has changed his name and appearance by quick-change costuming over the years, and has also become a thief.
He has a sachel of things that don't belong to him that he needs to unload quickly; but the man at the bar he is searching for is nowhere to be found. Special Services M finds him though, and warningly threatens him with capture.
He goes to a very well-attended party (four Singers!), and barely escapes arrest.
Time passes as the passcode changes and there is a list of the passcodes.
Future earnings, paranoia, profit and clean money lead to a conversation with Special Services M and then Arty the Hawk. Paranoia and double-checking, then a closed store releases him from immanent tasks.
HEMEAC (separate anthology book)
A child named HEMEAC raised by robots. The lessons of the robots are that robots are the height of perfection and that schooling is to raise organic beings as close as one can come to their perfection. This includes suppression of emotion, rigid control of facial expressions and voice tones.
It has been years, so the Dean (a robot), the Janitor, the Monitors, and the Instructors are all wearing down, but HEMEAC is terrified that he will fail the Special Examination and be expelled and exiled from the safety of the University.
The Cloudbuilders
Guilds are back! Jacobi is a Journeyman of the Guild. He has come to this area to learn what he can from the local Cloudbuilder, and to introduce hydrogen as a means of putting air into the large balloons that people use for air flight.
This is the story of a new dark age, where the Guild holds the technology from prior: computers, aircraft, and others.
The raiders come and torture makes Guildsmen (who try not to be partisan), specifically Jacobi, into great enemies.
Instructions and conversations turn this tiny European town into the hub of Cloudbuilder technology, hoping for airplanes shortly.
This Grand Carcass
A new level of machine sold to an ambitious businessman. The machine helps the man's business and grows wealthy itself.
A Visit to Cleveland General
A newspaper reporter is scheduled to visit Cleveland General for a story. His tour with a tour guide there brings up memories, and the reader is privy to the horror of machines doing the bidding of humans who are affected by memory chemicals as well as humans making decisions for others, but affected by the memory chemicals......
The reporter has his story as he leaves. He wishes he could have met the tour guide. His medication is increased.
The Selchey Kids
California has fallen into the sea. This occurred during the protagonist's lifetime, and his parents didn't survive. He eventually reunited with his parent's workplace, and it is determined that research has been left under the water. So an expedition goes down to retrieve it, resulting in drastic revelations for our protagonist.
Welcome to the Monkey House (separate story)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Dance of the Changer and the Three
Here we have a story of off-world excavation and different entities that have repercussions on humans.
It seems a central computer decided the risk of off-world excavation was worth the investment and sent men to get the metals off-planet. Particular beings of energy and color inhabited this world, and through one of their central lore, the reader is introduced to their vagaries and changes.
At the end of the story, the native energy beings disintegrated most of the excavators, leaving only a few alive. Research and talking with the entities revealed no animosity, nothing provoked their attack, so back on earth, the central computer is still considering whether to send people back.
Sword Game (separate story)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Total Environment (separate story)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Square Root of Brain
At a party, interspersed with quotes from the Universal American Encyclopedia, the author has a satirical bent on visitors from Outer Space.
Two men, mingling among the crowd, eventually end up in a back room. They return to their civilizations, ready to write reports.
The quotations from the Universal American Encyclopedia are sometimes short, sometimes long - but mostly..... sometimes do not make sense.
Starsong
A space battle between robots and humans. The robots being pushed back, the humans go through the areas used to keep humans - or their bits, pieces, and brains. The psychologist Ercul has to go through the human areas, and determine which ones are alive - and which ones are not.
For one particular evaluee, Ercul remembers the story of a singer, married to his love. The wife was playfully chased into enemy territory and captured. The singer went to rescue her, his singing pulled on the organic areas of the machines, and just as their escape was certain, the song ended and the wife was recaptured. The singer lost his will to live and as the psychologist caught the case, the singer's last request to be sent to the machine territory was honored.
Fear Hound
The world of New York City, people with psionic, empathic abilities.
In New York City during this time, if you aren't a student or don't have a job, then a ticket is given to you and you are shipped off to somewhere else.
Under threat of being shipped off, our protagonist George is very hungry. He meets up with a Rescue Squad worker named Ahmed follow the fear and despair of a very powerful Archetype.
Afterwards, as Ahmed goes through the probabilities of George's predictions, the statistics of the probabilities are extremely high.
Ahmed wants to get George into the Rescue Squad, but George has not completed the required schooling.
Ahmed goes to the captain and gets George into the Rescue Squad as a consultant.
George and Ahmed go to eat afterwards - and George recognizes that a person is planning murder. He waits until after the meal to alert Ahmed.
Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay
One person, Carmody, leaves his place in New York City to explore a state-of-the-art city in New Jersey. (Some would say this was his first problem.)
The city is named Bellwether. It is an Artificial Intelligence city, so it talks with Carmody.
Bellwether is deserted, though it used to have more people in it.
As Carmody stays for about three days (maybe more, maybe less), he realizes why the others left and then leaves himself.
Backtracked
In this short story, a person is able to go back to a particular point in time, but they have no memory of why they came back to that particular point. Spencer had been affected by polio, but his physical appearance had changed from thin and weak to buff and strong. He woke up by his wife. They got ready for a picnic, gotten to by bikes. At the picnic, Spencer was able to save his wife from falling off a cliff, but he broke his bad leg in the process, placing him back in the same position as his leg never fully healed.
Kyrie
On a spaceship headed to observe a star exploding.
A psychic and a Flame are connected telepathically.
When the ship is endangered, the Flame sacrifices himself to save the ship.
Going down Smooth (Separate book)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Worm that Flies
On a world where "change" is contemplated, an ape-human moves to collect rocks to complete his parapatterner. He finishes his journey. He finishes his project, and is haunted by the words that include "the worm that flies". There is no remembrance anymore, change is alien, and things just continue as they have been.
He threatens a crow beggar, who explains that many years ago, the formula for eternal life was placed in everything and now, as the universe outside is winding down and expiring, everyone is understanding that they were once children (no children exist now), and that their everlasting life will also wind down and they will expire. They remember death.
Masks formerly published in Playboy magazine
In a world where prosthetics are used and nothing is unusual about them, this story explores what happens if (or when) one's entire body is replaced. The subject is in a body that is more machine and he has some companionship He presents alternative bodies to those in charge, and posits that he can do space exploration because he doesn't need oxygen.
Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones
In this world of texting and automatic or mechanized communication, the criminal underground has to use different means of communicating. One of those ways is a passcode based on a semi-precious stone. There are also "Singers", people who have the ability to sing and gain people's attention to the exclusion of anything around them.
Our protagonist was an orphan, who first worked on a dairy farm. These are not free range cows; these are "induced semi-coma cows" whose only production is the milk. Our protagonist has changed his name and appearance by quick-change costuming over the years, and has also become a thief.
He has a sachel of things that don't belong to him that he needs to unload quickly; but the man at the bar he is searching for is nowhere to be found. Special Services M finds him though, and warningly threatens him with capture.
He goes to a very well-attended party (four Singers!), and barely escapes arrest.
Time passes as the passcode changes and there is a list of the passcodes.
Future earnings, paranoia, profit and clean money lead to a conversation with Special Services M and then Arty the Hawk. Paranoia and double-checking, then a closed store releases him from immanent tasks.
HEMEAC (separate anthology book)
A child named HEMEAC raised by robots. The lessons of the robots are that robots are the height of perfection and that schooling is to raise organic beings as close as one can come to their perfection. This includes suppression of emotion, rigid control of facial expressions and voice tones.
It has been years, so the Dean (a robot), the Janitor, the Monitors, and the Instructors are all wearing down, but HEMEAC is terrified that he will fail the Special Examination and be expelled and exiled from the safety of the University.
The Cloudbuilders
Guilds are back! Jacobi is a Journeyman of the Guild. He has come to this area to learn what he can from the local Cloudbuilder, and to introduce hydrogen as a means of putting air into the large balloons that people use for air flight.
This is the story of a new dark age, where the Guild holds the technology from prior: computers, aircraft, and others.
The raiders come and torture makes Guildsmen (who try not to be partisan), specifically Jacobi, into great enemies.
Instructions and conversations turn this tiny European town into the hub of Cloudbuilder technology, hoping for airplanes shortly.
This Grand Carcass
A new level of machine sold to an ambitious businessman. The machine helps the man's business and grows wealthy itself.
A Visit to Cleveland General
A newspaper reporter is scheduled to visit Cleveland General for a story. His tour with a tour guide there brings up memories, and the reader is privy to the horror of machines doing the bidding of humans who are affected by memory chemicals as well as humans making decisions for others, but affected by the memory chemicals......
The reporter has his story as he leaves. He wishes he could have met the tour guide. His medication is increased.
The Selchey Kids
California has fallen into the sea. This occurred during the protagonist's lifetime, and his parents didn't survive. He eventually reunited with his parent's workplace, and it is determined that research has been left under the water. So an expedition goes down to retrieve it, resulting in drastic revelations for our protagonist.
Welcome to the Monkey House (separate story)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Dance of the Changer and the Three
Here we have a story of off-world excavation and different entities that have repercussions on humans.
It seems a central computer decided the risk of off-world excavation was worth the investment and sent men to get the metals off-planet. Particular beings of energy and color inhabited this world, and through one of their central lore, the reader is introduced to their vagaries and changes.
At the end of the story, the native energy beings disintegrated most of the excavators, leaving only a few alive. Research and talking with the entities revealed no animosity, nothing provoked their attack, so back on earth, the central computer is still considering whether to send people back.
Sword Game (separate story)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Total Environment (separate story)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Square Root of Brain
At a party, interspersed with quotes from the Universal American Encyclopedia, the author has a satirical bent on visitors from Outer Space.
Two men, mingling among the crowd, eventually end up in a back room. They return to their civilizations, ready to write reports.
The quotations from the Universal American Encyclopedia are sometimes short, sometimes long - but mostly..... sometimes do not make sense.
Starsong
A space battle between robots and humans. The robots being pushed back, the humans go through the areas used to keep humans - or their bits, pieces, and brains. The psychologist Ercul has to go through the human areas, and determine which ones are alive - and which ones are not.
For one particular evaluee, Ercul remembers the story of a singer, married to his love. The wife was playfully chased into enemy territory and captured. The singer went to rescue her, his singing pulled on the organic areas of the machines, and just as their escape was certain, the song ended and the wife was recaptured. The singer lost his will to live and as the psychologist caught the case, the singer's last request to be sent to the machine territory was honored.
Fear Hound
The world of New York City, people with psionic, empathic abilities.
In New York City during this time, if you aren't a student or don't have a job, then a ticket is given to you and you are shipped off to somewhere else.
Under threat of being shipped off, our protagonist George is very hungry. He meets up with a Rescue Squad worker named Ahmed follow the fear and despair of a very powerful Archetype.
Afterwards, as Ahmed goes through the probabilities of George's predictions, the statistics of the probabilities are extremely high.
Ahmed wants to get George into the Rescue Squad, but George has not completed the required schooling.
Ahmed goes to the captain and gets George into the Rescue Squad as a consultant.
George and Ahmed go to eat afterwards - and George recognizes that a person is planning murder. He waits until after the meal to alert Ahmed.
December 10, 2025
The series continues, with a good look at sci-fi in general in 1968. As usual for the times, some rather embarrassing motifs like setting stories too close to 1968, so modern readers can wince. Well, they were writers, not prophets. For modern readers, it might be odd to see that one major magazine buying sci-fi was ... Playboy.
Warning for any dog lovers about to read this -- skip "Masks."
Once again, Jack Gaughan returns to do his blocky pen and ink illustrations, which appear on the title page and then at the titles of each selection.
Selections:
* "Introduction" by Our Co-editors. They describe how they choose the stories they do for the series, and why there are two editors instead of just one.
* "Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay" by Robert Sheckley. It's very rare that sci-fi stories labeled as funny actually are, but this is damn close. A model city of the future is built in New Jersey, and named Bellwether.
* "Backtracked" by Burt Flier. Very good time travel story with a happy ending ... sorta.
* "Kyrie" by Poul Anderson. On a spaceship studying a supernova, a human has a mental link with a bodiless being. The second half of the story really doesn't fit with the first half, though.
* "Going Down Smooth" by Robert Silverberg. A computer made to act as the perfect psychiatrist is perfectly fine, thank you. Perfectly fine. Nothing to worry about at all. Also, New Orleans has changed to Under New Orleans.
* "The Worm That Flies" by Brian W. Aldiss. It rambles strangely for a while, but keep at it. It makes sense in the end. Aldiss does have a different interpretation of the William Blake poem than many critics do.
* "Masks" by Damon Knight. What is it with Damon Knight and killing dogs? This time, it's a puppy. I realize the brutal killing and body disposal was central to the plot, but JEEZUS.
* "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" by Samuel R. Delaney. It's too bad that Delaney's middle name didn't begin wigh an A, since then his initials would be SAD. No -- I didn't like the story.
* "HEMEAC" by E. G. Von Vald. In a University of the future, kids are trained by robots to be robots. But the robots haven't quite taken over yet.
* "The Cloudbuilders" by Colin Kapp. Lively novella of the far future, where a mysterious Guild controls all cloud craft (balloons) in a civilization trying to rebuild.
* "The Grand Carcass" by R. A. Lafferty. Every now and then, Lafferty is able to produce a halfway decent story. This one is about the smartest robot ever made.
* "A Visit to Cleveland General" by Sydney Van Scyoc. Predictable look at American healthcare in the future, but not as dystopian as other similar stories. Has the naive sci-fi tropes of private flying saucers, and newspapers always being relevant.
* "The Selchey Kids" by Laurence Yep. Lots of sci-fi tropes merged into one, here -- telepathy, The Big One in California, and scientists creating new species in their lab.
* "Welcome to the Monkey House" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Yeah -- THAT Kurt Vonnegut. On the surface, this is a simple parody of the sexual hypocrisy of "good" Americans. But there are some very disturbing layers, especially by noting that many women' first sexual experience is rape. The story may also have contributed to the downfall of Howard Johnson's.
* "The Dance of the Changer and the Three" by Terry Carr. Although written by Our Co-editor, it was nominated for a Hugo, and so was included. Like other Carr stories, it has a great premise, but no resolution. The whole concept of a "foodbeast" was very sad.
* "Sword Game" by H. H. Hollister. Interesting and amusing sci-fi crime and punishment story. It makes use of a tesseract, a few years after the publication of A Wrinkle In Time.
* "Total Environment" by Brian W. Aldiss. One of those novellas where you're not sure if it's racist. In 1975 in India, 500 volunteer families are shut up in a huge dark tower in an experiment. 25 years later, the UN debates whether to shut the experiment down.
* "The Square Root of Brain" by Fritz Lieber. This is a difficult short story, but stick with it ... especially if you are a fan of Douglas Adams.
* "Starsong" by Fred Saberhagen. A retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, reset in Saberhagen's berserker universe.
* "Fear Hound" by Katherine MacLean. Despite the title, no Hounds appear, which is probably a good thing. In NYC, a psychic Rescue Squad is trying to locate a person responsible for most everyone in the city becoming suicidal. ESP was done to death in sci-fi by 1969, but this is perhaps the only story in the sub-genre that was any good.
Warning for any dog lovers about to read this -- skip "Masks."
Once again, Jack Gaughan returns to do his blocky pen and ink illustrations, which appear on the title page and then at the titles of each selection.
Selections:
* "Introduction" by Our Co-editors. They describe how they choose the stories they do for the series, and why there are two editors instead of just one.
* "Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay" by Robert Sheckley. It's very rare that sci-fi stories labeled as funny actually are, but this is damn close. A model city of the future is built in New Jersey, and named Bellwether.
* "Backtracked" by Burt Flier. Very good time travel story with a happy ending ... sorta.
* "Kyrie" by Poul Anderson. On a spaceship studying a supernova, a human has a mental link with a bodiless being. The second half of the story really doesn't fit with the first half, though.
* "Going Down Smooth" by Robert Silverberg. A computer made to act as the perfect psychiatrist is perfectly fine, thank you. Perfectly fine. Nothing to worry about at all. Also, New Orleans has changed to Under New Orleans.
* "The Worm That Flies" by Brian W. Aldiss. It rambles strangely for a while, but keep at it. It makes sense in the end. Aldiss does have a different interpretation of the William Blake poem than many critics do.
* "Masks" by Damon Knight. What is it with Damon Knight and killing dogs? This time, it's a puppy. I realize the brutal killing and body disposal was central to the plot, but JEEZUS.
* "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" by Samuel R. Delaney. It's too bad that Delaney's middle name didn't begin wigh an A, since then his initials would be SAD. No -- I didn't like the story.
* "HEMEAC" by E. G. Von Vald. In a University of the future, kids are trained by robots to be robots. But the robots haven't quite taken over yet.
* "The Cloudbuilders" by Colin Kapp. Lively novella of the far future, where a mysterious Guild controls all cloud craft (balloons) in a civilization trying to rebuild.
* "The Grand Carcass" by R. A. Lafferty. Every now and then, Lafferty is able to produce a halfway decent story. This one is about the smartest robot ever made.
* "A Visit to Cleveland General" by Sydney Van Scyoc. Predictable look at American healthcare in the future, but not as dystopian as other similar stories. Has the naive sci-fi tropes of private flying saucers, and newspapers always being relevant.
* "The Selchey Kids" by Laurence Yep. Lots of sci-fi tropes merged into one, here -- telepathy, The Big One in California, and scientists creating new species in their lab.
* "Welcome to the Monkey House" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Yeah -- THAT Kurt Vonnegut. On the surface, this is a simple parody of the sexual hypocrisy of "good" Americans. But there are some very disturbing layers, especially by noting that many women' first sexual experience is rape. The story may also have contributed to the downfall of Howard Johnson's.
* "The Dance of the Changer and the Three" by Terry Carr. Although written by Our Co-editor, it was nominated for a Hugo, and so was included. Like other Carr stories, it has a great premise, but no resolution. The whole concept of a "foodbeast" was very sad.
* "Sword Game" by H. H. Hollister. Interesting and amusing sci-fi crime and punishment story. It makes use of a tesseract, a few years after the publication of A Wrinkle In Time.
* "Total Environment" by Brian W. Aldiss. One of those novellas where you're not sure if it's racist. In 1975 in India, 500 volunteer families are shut up in a huge dark tower in an experiment. 25 years later, the UN debates whether to shut the experiment down.
* "The Square Root of Brain" by Fritz Lieber. This is a difficult short story, but stick with it ... especially if you are a fan of Douglas Adams.
* "Starsong" by Fred Saberhagen. A retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, reset in Saberhagen's berserker universe.
* "Fear Hound" by Katherine MacLean. Despite the title, no Hounds appear, which is probably a good thing. In NYC, a psychic Rescue Squad is trying to locate a person responsible for most everyone in the city becoming suicidal. ESP was done to death in sci-fi by 1969, but this is perhaps the only story in the sub-genre that was any good.
April 2, 2025
Wollheim is a very good editor. His story choices in all his collections are always great. There is good variety in this volume and no duds.
April 16, 2016
Ne znam, možda se Delany izgubi u prijevodu, ali ova priča je poprilično konfuzna. Imam problem s Samuelom, ponekad me oduševi, a ponekad razočara - postane rob vlastitog stila pa me to umori. Od svega u ovoj noveli izdvoio bih samo nekoliko rečenica koje su promišljene i inteligentno spredene... ostalo mi je, iskreno, bezveze.
November 15, 2011
There were some good stories in this book. Although I wasn't too fond of the one where the hero is a serial rapist. WTF?
July 23, 2025
[FIRST READING: * * * * ]
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