If This Goes Wrong . . .

by Hank Davis

WHAT COULD GO WRONG…?

Progress! It’s wonderful—though it sometimes has unexpected and undesirable side effects. Read the long warning list of possible side effects on a medicine bottle’s label sometime…the part in really tiny print.

But surely the benefits of modern technology outweigh the drawbacks. Until they don’t. Remember how increasingly deadly weapons, from the machine gun to the H-bomb, were supposed to make war too horrific to even be contemplated? Didn’t happen. The cell phone has made it possible to phone from almost anywhere—too bad if you wanted to be out of reach. And civilization is so big and complicated, that a breakdown of any part can have disastrous consequences. Modern transportation makes it possible to get anywhere in a hurry, though traffic jams and overextended airports may slow the hurry part to a crawl. And it also can ensure that a new disease can go all over the planet in a few days. Then, there’s the sheer complexity of society itself, from interminable waits at the DMV to trying to get tech help on the phone (“Your call is important to us…”).

And that’s just the present day. What new technologies, new ways of organizing (or disorganizing) society, new confused and confusing government bureaucracies, new ways for small disgruntled groups to wreak havoc, and worse, will the future bring? Will privacy keep eroding? Could computers and robots take over? Maybe they wouldn’t want to. And if the pace of modern life is driving you batty, just wait to see what’s on the horizon.

Exploring such scary, yet fascinating, possibilities are such masters of science fiction as Robert A. Heinlein, Sarah A. Hoyt, Fritz Leiber, Gordon R. Dickson, Lester del Rey, Christopher Anvil, Fredric Brown, and more, writers who have seen the future—and it may not work…

At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Praise for previous anthologies edited by Hank Davis

In Space No One Can Hear You Scream
“. . . the 13 tales in this collection blend sf with horror to demonstrate the resiliency of both genres . . . offers strong tales by the genre’s best storytellers.” — Library Journal

“. . . first-rate science fiction, demonstrating how short stories can still entertain.” — Galveston County Daily News

A Cosmic Christmas 2 You
“This creative and sprightly Christmas science fiction anthology spins in some surprising directions . . . A satisfying read for cold winter evenings . . . a great stocking stuffer for SF fans.” — Publishers Weekly

As Time Goes By
“ As Time Goes By . . . does an excellent job of exploring not only romance through time travel—relationships enabled or imperiled by voyaging through time—but the intrinsic romance of time travel itself . . . The range of styles and approaches is as wide as the authors' sensibilities and periods might suggest . . . full of entertaining and poignant stories . . .” —Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, IntergalacticMedicineShow.com

Hank Davis is Senior Editor at Baen Books. He served in Vietnam in the Army and has had stories in Analog Science Fiction , The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , and anthologies If and Orbit , as well as Harlan Ellison's The Last Dangerous Visions .

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Science Fiction Fantasy

310 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 27, 2016

Reviews

[Bart Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A satisfying collection of science fiction short stories-- many by authors we know: Robert A Heinlien, Fritz Lieber, Clifford D Simak, Lester del Rey, and a few less well known. Even though the vast majority of these stories saw the light of day in the 1940s -1960s, they still read as if they could have been published today. However, few of today's authors seem to have the skills to both entertain and write well.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining anthology of science fiction stories largely from the 1940s-60s. The theme, as you might expect from the title, is what happens when experiments or building projects or journeys go spectacularly wrong. Some highlights include:

"Moxon's Master" - Ambrose Bierce (1899) - an early robot tale of a chess-playing automaton who unfortunately was not programmed to lose gracefully...

"Computers Don't Argue" - Gordon R. Dickson (1965) - A darkly humorous tale told through a series of letters and proto-emails about what happens when a man tries to return a damaged book....

"The Creature from Cleveland Depths" - Fritz Leiber (1962) - Read it for the snappy and colorful dialogue, or the prescient tale about how a new device designed to help people remember appointments takes over their lives...

"-And He Built a Crooked House" - Robert A. Heinlein (1941) - A mind-bending tale of what happens when an eccentric architect builds a house in the form of a tesseract and how he and his client gets trapped inside it...

Editor Hank Davis provides a short introduction and author biography before each story.

[Benjamin Kahn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story started with a couple of clunkers but then got much better. Most of the stories were pretty enjoyable. I have to admit, I find I'm not a huge fan of classic sci-fi (only two of these stories were written in my lifetime) - and I don't find it ages that well - but most of the stories in this book were good, and it was worth the read.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting collection of science fiction stories about, as the title says, things going terribly wrong. Some of the stories are funny and some grim, so it's a nice mixture. The only problem is that the book has a lot of typos. Other than that, it is entertaining.

[Kay Hudson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthology, mostly old stories, about unintended consequences. Many of the stories are classics, but the good ideas have been passed up by technology.