New Writings in SF 27

New Writings in SF #27

by Kenneth Bulmer (Editor), Colin Kapp (Contributor), Vera Johnson (Contributor)

A collection of Science Fiction Stories.

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction, Anthologies

208 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Henry Kenneth Bulmer
aka:
Alan Burt Akers
Ken Blake
Ernest Corley
Arthur Frazier
Adam Hardy
Philip Kent
Bruno Krauss
Neil Langholm
Karl Maras
Manning Norvil
Charles R. Pike
Andrew Quiller
Richard Silver
Tully Zetford

Reviews

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Bartholomew & Son” are a pair of artists whose medium is emotional mobiles - sculptures which use light and sound and slithe skins to evoke, amplify, or mute an emotional response. When the father.sees his son seduced by an aging 3V star he creates one last mobile in Michael Coney’s strange tale. Brian Aldiss gives us three disparate vignettes in “Year By Year The Evil Gains”; a young woman grows up in The Kremlin accompanied by a distant father; a starship crew embark on a mass slaughter of intelligent indigenes; and why is the Earth sitting inside Jupiter’s Great Red Spot? John Rackham (John Phillifent) gives us a doctor who has finally found a way to know what his patients feel, but it is killing him, in “Heal Thyself”, and Colin Kapp closes proceedings with “Cassius And The Mind-Jaunt” where a physicist is coerced into invading the mind of another scientist who defected to Russia, in order to get fusion secrets. A rather convoluted story but the most entertaining of the book. Remaining tales are either forgettable or incomprehensible.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely one of the better books in the series, and the first one where "modern" science fiction stories outnumbered golden age tales - with stories ranging from near future dystopias involving authoritarianism (Johnson, Linnett), genetic modification (Van Laerhoven), climate change and government secrecy (Langford - with tongue firmly in cheek), and a tale which is a direct precursor of the likes of "Inception" (Kapp). Top that off with a Ballard-like fable from Michael G Coney and perhaps the most enigmatic of Brian Aldiss's enigmas, and you have a fine addition to this series.

[Jon Pennycook · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a great collection. The only stories that stuck in my mind were "Cassius and the Mind-Jaunt" by Colin Kapp, and "Heatwave" by the timeless and reliable David Langford. Although this is a collection of stories published in 1975, the writing style of many feels more like the 1960s and not in a good way.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent science fiction collection from 1975.
It wasn't particularly inspiring compared to other books in this series. The editor seemed to rate the more boring stories as his favourites; The Day They Cut off the Power by Vera Johnson (the only female author represented here) and Zone by Peter Linnett were both lifeless expressions of dissatisfaction with the system that could have come from any schoolchild's English essay.

The stories by Keith Wells and Graham Charnock I just plain didn't like. They weren't bad, as such, but there didn't seem to be any point in them existing. Long Time Ago, Not Forgotten by Bob Van Laerhoven, about life in an alien circus is better, but still only barely worth reading, with a dull and unsatisfying payoff. And Heal Thyself by John Rackoff which covers electronic empathy and mind-connections is ok. Yes, just ok. The same ground gets crossed by Kapp's finale so much better that this story is eclipsed.

Brian Aldiss appears for a typically Aldissian series of non-sequiturs in Year by Year the Evil Gains, which is part of a longer series by him that doesn't sit all that well in a science fiction collection. It's nicely-written, though, and thought-provoking.

There were three stand-out pieces for me:

Bartholomew & Son (and the Fish-Girl) by Michael G. Coney gives us a funny world, where sea life has been adapted to land and art quite literally conveys emotion. It's well-written and with only a couple of turns of phrase changed I could imagine it appearing in a "new writings" from this century instead.

Heatwave is just as perfect a piece of science fiction satire as I've ever read, even if one or two of the acronyms he uses could have done without the repetition drawing attention to them. The world is heating up, but it's all just a distraction as bureaucrats and scientists rush to solve the mystery of an intercepted coded message: The Sun Is Going Nova.

Cassius and the Mind-Jaunt by Colin Kapp explored, in 1975, so many of the questions we demanded of shows like Star Trek when the star actors had their bodies swapped, or infiltrated someone's dreams. The questions that got answered decades later in films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Inception could probably all be shown to have been answered here first. It's witty and engaging, and it's a little bit of escapist adventure to end the book with.

I'm rating this as four stars because of these highlights. Overall, it's a disappointing package.

[Ed]

ISFDB 276452.