Car Sinister

by Martin H. Greenberg, Robert Silverberg (Editor), Joseph D. Olander (Editor)

The car is man's most personalized machine: for teenagers it is a rite of passage and a statement of freedom; for adults it is a reflection of success, taste, and hopes; and for an entire culture it is a great and industrious mode of transportation - driving, perhaps, on the road of destruction. And the automobile - thrilling, honking, speeding, never-shattering - haunts us with the dark possibility that when our age of motoring innocence is over, we may no longer be the masters.

CAR SINISTER - a splendid, imaginative vision of what lies down the road for all of us.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Anthologies, Science Fiction, Fiction

254 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 1, 1979

About the author

Martin Harry Greenberg was an American academic and speculative fiction anthologist. In all, he compiled 1,298 anthologies and commissioned over 8,200 original short stories. He founded Tekno Books, a packager of more than 2000 published books. In addition, he was a co-founder of the Sci-Fi Channel.

For the 1950s anthologist and publisher of Gnome Press, see Martin Greenberg.

Reviews

[Mark H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like all short story collections, not all are hits. For me, I struggle with anything all written in ‘futuristic’ slang. But there are twenty stories here with a far better hit rate than most anthologies. I particularly liked the more outrageous, exaggerated violence of overcrowding on the highways, like Fritz Lieber’s and Harlan Ellison’s stories. Best was the first, Roger Zelazny’s showdown with a ‘Devil car’. But there’s a range of other futures here, including an early George R R Martin tale, taking a trip into the twilight zone.
Unusual and rewarding collection.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent collection of science fiction and fantasy stories about -- what else? -- cars: our obsession with them, how they dominate our society, how they affect our world physically and us emotionally, etc. This was published in 1979 but is still relevant today -- perhaps even more so.

[Nick Boldrini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like any collection of short stories, a mixed bag - some I really liked (The Scenic route; Station HR972) others were not my thing (Romance in a Twenty-first Century used car lot). But more good than bad.

[Tom B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining anthology of car-themed stories. Most of the stories are fine; a few of them stand out; one or two were pretty bad.

The better ones are:
Traffic Problem, about a dystopian future in NYC where highways are stacked on top of each other.
A Day on Death Highway, about a family who ends up on a different planet doing a gladiator-style fight over a traffic incident.
Waves of Ecology, where a group uses trees to destroy the rubber of tires in an effort to improve air quality by making driving impossible.
Wheels, about a guy having to face a policeman in a future where cars are outlawed.
East Wind, West Wind, a detective-like story in a hyper-polluted city where a govt agent needs to find an illegally operated car.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

With regard to the cover I thought about some horror fest on cars, highways and eerie roadmovie situations. The 20 stories even though many by prominent authors like (e.g. George R. R. Martin, Fritz Leiber or Frank Herbert) were more on the science fiction side than horror. You'll find rather utopian questions discussed in the stories than pure horror. Were do all the cars lead to? Are we dependent to cars and what are consequences of a mass car industry? Published in the late 70s many problems are still as relevant as they were back then. Nevertheless I would have loved to be more horror motifs inside. If you don't mind the lack of horror this anthology might be worth a glance for you.