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Lambda I and Other Stories
Includes a short story by Michael Moorcock, titled 'Flux'. This eight top-line SF stories in this selection have been chosen by John Carnell from the best of year's contributions to New World's Science Fiction. They include Colin Knapp's Lambda 1, which reaches spine-chilling dimensions when a spacecraft, packed with a thousand passengers, loses it capacity to re-enter a normal environment. In Quest, by Lee Harding, an ordinary man look for 'something real' in a world dominated by robots and megapolitan madness. The atomic submarine Taurus, in Philip E. High's Routine Exercise, returns to base with two dead men, minus its nuclear warheads, and fantastic report of attack by an unknown craft. "This is", the editor wrote, "a cross-section of recently popular British science-fiction which has been well-liked by many thousands of readers in different countries of the world".
206 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
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John Carnell
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 18, 2018
New Worlds was a British science fiction magazine that started professional publication in 1946. Despite some financial hiccups, it was a reasonably good seller, and was still going in the early 1960s when the stories chosen for this anthology were published. The editor picked stories that had gotten a good reception in Great Britain, but never before published in America. According to his introduction, this was the first paperback anthology of “foreign” science fiction stories published in the U.S.
“Lambda I” by Colin Kapp leads off with a transportation engineer being visited by an old friend. It turns out the friend is a psychologist, here to try to reconcile the engineer and that man’s estranged wife. The science fiction part comes in with the Tau transportation system, which uses a dimensional shift to send ships directly through the Earth so that one can travel in straight lines from one point to another.
It turns out that the Tau system has an inherent stability problem, and if a ship ever became locked into the never-actually-seen-before Omega frequency, disaster would ensue. The engineer’s futile attempts to forestall this problem led to the stress that caused his marriage to collapse.
Oh, guess what! Yes, a ship has gone into Omega frequency. Yes, if it isn’t fixed, the entire Eastern Seaboard will be destroyed. Yes, the engineer’s wife is aboard and she’s carrying his child! Yes, there are only a few hours before the dimensional rift, and the one thing that might have a chance of getting the two protagonists there in time is an experimental prototype without proper shielding.
There’s some hallucinatory sequences that would have blown the budget in any 1960s movie as our heroes explore the weird dimensional shift that the lost ship in stranded in. It turns out that psychic vibrations affect the Tau system, so the psychologist is the one who saves the day.
“Basis for Negotiation” by Brian W. Aldiss takes place in the then-near future of 1971. America and Red China are at war, with the possibility of escalation into nuclear attacks imminent. In a startlingly tone-deaf moment, the British Prime Minister has declared Great Britain strictly neutral. He’s ordered all American military forces out of the British Isles, and is planning to Brexit from NATO.
Sir Simon, Chair of Moral History at the University College of East Lincoln, is livid. True, he might not currently be in the government, but he feels a deep interest in public affairs. He must get to London and see what can be done to fix this! The remainder of the story is his journey to Whitehall and what he finds there.
This story was turned down by all the American magazines Mr. Aldiss submitted it to, possibly because it’s a bit too “insider cricket” (there’s a very House of Cards moment at the end), but it might also have been the relatively sympathetic portrayal of gay Communist David.
Yes, David was in favor of disarmament, but as part of a global reduction of arms, not a unilateral surrender. And yes, he’s a Communist, but he is by George a British Communist. One can’t fault his courage or moral fiber, but his combat judgement is poor. Also, his obsession with classism makes him a very irritating companion for long car trips.
The science part of the science fiction comes in at the last moment and puts a very different cast on what the actions of various characters leads up to.
“Quest” by Lee Harding takes us to a future where robots are everywhere and everywhere looks exactly the same. One man senses that this is wrong, and goes in search of something, anything, real. He may be too late. A grim story.
“All Laced Up” by George Whitley is a comedic tale about interior design. You may have noticed that iron lace isn’t around much any more. Especially the really intricate handcrafted stuff. It turns out there’s a reason for that. Unusual for having a female…villain? whose motive is pretty much entirely financial.
“Routine Exercise” by Philip E. High involves a time traveling nuclear submarine. Has a mandatory twist at the end, but some very evocative scenes as the submariners try to figure out what’s going on while being hunted by aliens.
“Flux” by Michael Moorcock is set in a unified Europe of the future. Max File, prototype superbrain, is called in because the ruling council has discovered that society is going to crash in the next few years. They don’t know how, and fear that any action by the government to stall the crash will cause it instead. However, they have a time machine.
File turns out to be the sole living subject of an experiment in creating artificial supergeniuses through vaguely-described education of children. All the others went mad, and File might have joined them, but the scientists purged much of the excess knowledge from his brain. He is still, however, the most flexible mind on Earth, and the only one who can be trusted with a time machine to go into the near future to gather information.
File arrives in the ruined future, and learns of the disastrous effects of several different social experiments that collapsed civilization in various ways. He attempts to return to his present, only to discover that time machines don’t work that way.
Things get progressively weirder as File continues his quest, and finally learns the true nature of time itself. This allows him to accomplish his goal…sort of.
Mr. Moorcock would soon take the helm of New Worlds and turn it into a haven for the experimental “New Wave” style of science fiction. This is definitely a forerunner of the movement.
And we finish with “The Last Salamander” by John Rackham. A coal-burning power plant awakens something from prehistory. A living thing that is at a temperature that no human could withstand. One of the workers (actually a company spy) must figure out a way to destroy the creature before it destroys all the workers and surrounding area. It’s a bit of a sad story, and would have made a good episode of The Outer Limits.
I like “All Laced Up” and “The Last Salamander” best, but “Basis for Negotiation” and “Flux” are pretty good too. “Quest” is perhaps too predictable.
Recommended to fans of British science fiction, and especially to those who favor Michael Moorcock and Brian W. Aldiss.
“Lambda I” by Colin Kapp leads off with a transportation engineer being visited by an old friend. It turns out the friend is a psychologist, here to try to reconcile the engineer and that man’s estranged wife. The science fiction part comes in with the Tau transportation system, which uses a dimensional shift to send ships directly through the Earth so that one can travel in straight lines from one point to another.
It turns out that the Tau system has an inherent stability problem, and if a ship ever became locked into the never-actually-seen-before Omega frequency, disaster would ensue. The engineer’s futile attempts to forestall this problem led to the stress that caused his marriage to collapse.
Oh, guess what! Yes, a ship has gone into Omega frequency. Yes, if it isn’t fixed, the entire Eastern Seaboard will be destroyed. Yes, the engineer’s wife is aboard and she’s carrying his child! Yes, there are only a few hours before the dimensional rift, and the one thing that might have a chance of getting the two protagonists there in time is an experimental prototype without proper shielding.
There’s some hallucinatory sequences that would have blown the budget in any 1960s movie as our heroes explore the weird dimensional shift that the lost ship in stranded in. It turns out that psychic vibrations affect the Tau system, so the psychologist is the one who saves the day.
“Basis for Negotiation” by Brian W. Aldiss takes place in the then-near future of 1971. America and Red China are at war, with the possibility of escalation into nuclear attacks imminent. In a startlingly tone-deaf moment, the British Prime Minister has declared Great Britain strictly neutral. He’s ordered all American military forces out of the British Isles, and is planning to Brexit from NATO.
Sir Simon, Chair of Moral History at the University College of East Lincoln, is livid. True, he might not currently be in the government, but he feels a deep interest in public affairs. He must get to London and see what can be done to fix this! The remainder of the story is his journey to Whitehall and what he finds there.
This story was turned down by all the American magazines Mr. Aldiss submitted it to, possibly because it’s a bit too “insider cricket” (there’s a very House of Cards moment at the end), but it might also have been the relatively sympathetic portrayal of gay Communist David.
Yes, David was in favor of disarmament, but as part of a global reduction of arms, not a unilateral surrender. And yes, he’s a Communist, but he is by George a British Communist. One can’t fault his courage or moral fiber, but his combat judgement is poor. Also, his obsession with classism makes him a very irritating companion for long car trips.
The science part of the science fiction comes in at the last moment and puts a very different cast on what the actions of various characters leads up to.
“Quest” by Lee Harding takes us to a future where robots are everywhere and everywhere looks exactly the same. One man senses that this is wrong, and goes in search of something, anything, real. He may be too late. A grim story.
“All Laced Up” by George Whitley is a comedic tale about interior design. You may have noticed that iron lace isn’t around much any more. Especially the really intricate handcrafted stuff. It turns out there’s a reason for that. Unusual for having a female…villain? whose motive is pretty much entirely financial.
“Routine Exercise” by Philip E. High involves a time traveling nuclear submarine. Has a mandatory twist at the end, but some very evocative scenes as the submariners try to figure out what’s going on while being hunted by aliens.
“Flux” by Michael Moorcock is set in a unified Europe of the future. Max File, prototype superbrain, is called in because the ruling council has discovered that society is going to crash in the next few years. They don’t know how, and fear that any action by the government to stall the crash will cause it instead. However, they have a time machine.
File turns out to be the sole living subject of an experiment in creating artificial supergeniuses through vaguely-described education of children. All the others went mad, and File might have joined them, but the scientists purged much of the excess knowledge from his brain. He is still, however, the most flexible mind on Earth, and the only one who can be trusted with a time machine to go into the near future to gather information.
File arrives in the ruined future, and learns of the disastrous effects of several different social experiments that collapsed civilization in various ways. He attempts to return to his present, only to discover that time machines don’t work that way.
Things get progressively weirder as File continues his quest, and finally learns the true nature of time itself. This allows him to accomplish his goal…sort of.
Mr. Moorcock would soon take the helm of New Worlds and turn it into a haven for the experimental “New Wave” style of science fiction. This is definitely a forerunner of the movement.
And we finish with “The Last Salamander” by John Rackham. A coal-burning power plant awakens something from prehistory. A living thing that is at a temperature that no human could withstand. One of the workers (actually a company spy) must figure out a way to destroy the creature before it destroys all the workers and surrounding area. It’s a bit of a sad story, and would have made a good episode of The Outer Limits.
I like “All Laced Up” and “The Last Salamander” best, but “Basis for Negotiation” and “Flux” are pretty good too. “Quest” is perhaps too predictable.
Recommended to fans of British science fiction, and especially to those who favor Michael Moorcock and Brian W. Aldiss.
August 25, 2014
'Lambda I and Other Stories' contains seven short stories from the UK in the early 1960's.
'Lambda I' is the prototype interdimensional transport ship that is sent to rescue a much newer liner stuck between dimensions.
'Basis for Negotiation': Political behind-the-scenes when the UK cancels its military treaties and America is attacked.
A future man's 'Quest' leaves no stone unturned looking for... an unturned stone (pristine nature).
'All Laced Up': A time-traveling businesswoman gets the deal of the [time period] after jumping ahead of her business partners.
A 'Routine Exercise' for a new submarine lands them several thousand years in the past where they hostilely engage with dinosaurs and a spaceship.
'Flux' sends a man 10 years into the future to help determine what's going wrong, but he cannot come directly back.
A story of 'The Last Salamander', the last fire-salamander, that is.
Most stories, which were all about men from monocultures, had token mentions of 'wives'--but 'All Laced Up' had a wife and a businesswoman from the future! I really appreciated the jokes and assumptions in the time-travel stories, and also 'The Last Salamander'--I thought this collection had a weak opening with 'Lambda I' and 'Basis for Negotiation' though. Generally the editor did well in grouping these stories--some even had very similar events take place (e.g. time-travel, officials offering to whitewash reports of the paranormal). Authors Philip E. High ('Routine Exercise') and John Rackham ('The Last Salamander') look to be worth finding again.
'Lambda I' is the prototype interdimensional transport ship that is sent to rescue a much newer liner stuck between dimensions.
'Basis for Negotiation': Political behind-the-scenes when the UK cancels its military treaties and America is attacked.
A future man's 'Quest' leaves no stone unturned looking for... an unturned stone (pristine nature).
'All Laced Up': A time-traveling businesswoman gets the deal of the [time period] after jumping ahead of her business partners.
A 'Routine Exercise' for a new submarine lands them several thousand years in the past where they hostilely engage with dinosaurs and a spaceship.
'Flux' sends a man 10 years into the future to help determine what's going wrong, but he cannot come directly back.
A story of 'The Last Salamander', the last fire-salamander, that is.
Most stories, which were all about men from monocultures, had token mentions of 'wives'--but 'All Laced Up' had a wife and a businesswoman from the future! I really appreciated the jokes and assumptions in the time-travel stories, and also 'The Last Salamander'--I thought this collection had a weak opening with 'Lambda I' and 'Basis for Negotiation' though. Generally the editor did well in grouping these stories--some even had very similar events take place (e.g. time-travel, officials offering to whitewash reports of the paranormal). Authors Philip E. High ('Routine Exercise') and John Rackham ('The Last Salamander') look to be worth finding again.
January 10, 2016
This is a collection of British sci-fi from the early 60’s, interesting to me mainly for the cultural snapshots than the quality of the stories. This was British sci fi, written for the British market, and it shows: in the language, the speech patterns, the class divisions and the characters’ motivations. Not that these tells aren’t present when some of these same authors are writing for a broader audience, but here it seems to permeate the background.
The stories themselves are solid, but not spectacular. I suppose that is to be expected, given that these were all from a single magazine (New Worlds Science Fiction) over a short time period and “previously unpublished in the USA”, so it necessarily excludes award-winners and those good enough to have made it into other anthologies. The story quality is about what you’d expect for a sort of consolation-prize anthology.
I didn’t care much for the title story, a slightly paranormal story of psychological distress caused by a new sort of travel by quantum tunneling, which managed to squeeze in a surprising amount of atomic physics. My favorite was probably John Rackham’s “The Last Salamander”, a short but impressively vivid recounting of first contact with a thermophilic species that thrives in the bowels of a coal furnace.
The stories themselves are solid, but not spectacular. I suppose that is to be expected, given that these were all from a single magazine (New Worlds Science Fiction) over a short time period and “previously unpublished in the USA”, so it necessarily excludes award-winners and those good enough to have made it into other anthologies. The story quality is about what you’d expect for a sort of consolation-prize anthology.
I didn’t care much for the title story, a slightly paranormal story of psychological distress caused by a new sort of travel by quantum tunneling, which managed to squeeze in a surprising amount of atomic physics. My favorite was probably John Rackham’s “The Last Salamander”, a short but impressively vivid recounting of first contact with a thermophilic species that thrives in the bowels of a coal furnace.
June 24, 2022
Eine Anthologie, deren deutsche Ausgabe mal wieder gekürzt wurde, wie es leider nicht unüblich war in der Zeit.
Sie enthält:
Brian W. Aldiss - Die Stimme der Vernunft (Basis for Negotiation): Als Amerika in den Krieg mit China und Russland eintritt, kündigt GB das Bündnis auf, um nicht selber in Gefahr zu geraten. Welch eine Schande für jeden Patrioten! Ex-Politiker Simon muss was tun, vielleicht sogar an einem Putsch teilnehmen.
John Rackham - der letzte Salamander (The Last Salamander) In einem Kohlekraftwerk schlüpft eine urweltliches Tier aus, das im Feuer lebt.
Colin Kapp - Die Phase des Schreckens (Lambda I) Obwohl die Wissenschaft den Tau-Raum noch nicht versteht, wird er schon wirtschaftlich genutzt, nämlich zum Transport von Menschen und Waren. Früher oder später muss das zu einem Unglück führen.
Michael Moorcock - Der Strom der Zeit (Flux) Die gigantische Stadt im Europäischen Wirtschaftsbund ist außer Kontrolle. Da schickt man mal schnell jemanden in die Zukunft, um Informationen zu sammeln.
Fazit: Eine unterdurchschnittliche Collection, die zu recht einen schlechten Schnitt bei goodreads hat. Die ersten beiden Stories gehen halbwegs.
Das herausragend hässliche Cover passt nicht so schlecht, würde ich sagen.
Sie enthält:
Brian W. Aldiss - Die Stimme der Vernunft (Basis for Negotiation): Als Amerika in den Krieg mit China und Russland eintritt, kündigt GB das Bündnis auf, um nicht selber in Gefahr zu geraten. Welch eine Schande für jeden Patrioten! Ex-Politiker Simon muss was tun, vielleicht sogar an einem Putsch teilnehmen.
John Rackham - der letzte Salamander (The Last Salamander) In einem Kohlekraftwerk schlüpft eine urweltliches Tier aus, das im Feuer lebt.
Colin Kapp - Die Phase des Schreckens (Lambda I) Obwohl die Wissenschaft den Tau-Raum noch nicht versteht, wird er schon wirtschaftlich genutzt, nämlich zum Transport von Menschen und Waren. Früher oder später muss das zu einem Unglück führen.
Michael Moorcock - Der Strom der Zeit (Flux) Die gigantische Stadt im Europäischen Wirtschaftsbund ist außer Kontrolle. Da schickt man mal schnell jemanden in die Zukunft, um Informationen zu sammeln.
Fazit: Eine unterdurchschnittliche Collection, die zu recht einen schlechten Schnitt bei goodreads hat. Die ersten beiden Stories gehen halbwegs.
Das herausragend hässliche Cover passt nicht so schlecht, würde ich sagen.
July 31, 2009
Don't go too much by my rating. I scarcely remember anything about this collection of SF stories. Not a lot of big names here, although Moorcock has a story in it. I just can't recall it and usually I can recall at least one story out of a collection. It's a fairly short book, with just 7 stories.
May 29, 2013
Great, classic and british sci fi!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews