Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: First Annual Collection

Best Science Fiction Stories of the year (Del Rey/Dozois) #1

by Lester del Rey (Editor)

A collection of the best fifteen science fiction stories of 1972. Edited by Lester del Ray.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Anthologies

250 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1972

About the author

Lester del Rey was an American science fiction author and editor. Del Rey is especially famous for his juvenile novels such as those which are part of the Winston Science Fiction series, and for Del Rey Books, the fantasy and science fiction branch of Ballantine Books edited by Lester del Rey and his fourth wife Judy-Lynn del Rey.

Also published as:
Philip St. John
Erik van Lhin
Kenneth Wright
Edson McCann (with Frederik Pohl)

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first volume of del Rey's annual best-of-the-year choices which covers stories originally published in 1971. There used to be several such anthology series back in the day, and it was always fun to compare the choices. The oddball/off-the-wall BEM cover of this one should be noted in contrast to del Rey's introduction and afterword which advocated more serious consideration of the stories as serious literature. The book contains some good stories, including Larry Niven's Rammer, my favorite Philip Jose Farmer story, The Sliced-Crosswise Only-on-Tuesday World, and James Tiptree, Jr.'s delightfully titled I'll Be Waiting For You When the Swimming Pool is Empty. My favorite is Robert Silverberg's Good News From the Vatican.

[Roddy Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

A round-up of some of the best writing from the movers and shakers in the genre as of 1971.
James Tiptree Jr is featured, before she came out to the world (or at least the SF world) as Alice Sheldon. Interestingly, there are two stories which deal with environmental issues. There three tales of pilots being forced to man ships, two dealing with the Catholic Church and two dealing with lovers being separated by time, space or other factors.


The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World – Philip Jose Farmer (New Dimensions 1, 1971)

Interesting idea of a world where the huge population share the planet by a seventh of them having one day each, while the rest remain in stasis in transparent tanks, but what happens when one is living on Tuesdays and falls in love with someone from the Wednesday world?

Good News From The Vatican – Robert Silverberg (Universe 1, 1971)

This story, of the first robot Pope, has subsequently won awards and been reprinted countless times.

I’ll Be Waiting For You When The Swimming Pool is Empty – James Tiptree Jr (Protostars, 1971)

A light-hearted tale by Tiptree.
A young man visits a primitive planet and brings them the gift of western-style democracy. One wonders whether there isn’t a tinge of savage irony at the heart of this story. One also wonders what the relevance of the title is.

The Power of The Sentence – David M Locke (F&SF, April 1971)

A cleverly structured tale in which a lecture on grammar becomes a battle fought in words between extra-dimensional entities.

The Wicked Flee – Harry Harrison (New Dimensions 1, 1971)

Harrison seldom disappoints and here provides a beautifully atmospheric piece in which a renegade from a Catholic dictatorship of the future escapes into the past, pursued by an agent of the Church.
An interesting take on alternate pasts and presents.

When You Hear The Tone – Thomas N Scortia (Galaxy, 1971)

A poetic love story about a man who gets to know a woman through some form of time communication. Although he remains in his time frame he manages to call a woman through various periods of her life until he is brought up to date, and they can meet.
Not as schmaltzy as one would imagine.

Occam’s Scalpel – Theodore Sturgeon (If, Aug 1971)

A kind of double bluff from Sturgeon in which an employee of a multinational is worried by the new boss, now that the old dictator has died. He arranges for the new boss to examine the dead man’s body, and to see that it is not human, but what is really going on, and who is fooling whom?

Hot Potato – Burt K Filer (The Many Worlds of Science Fiction, 1971)

One of those quasi-humourous wise-cracking fast-paced pieces in which the opposing sides in a nuclear conflict learn how to store their arsenal in hyperspace.

The Human Operators – Ellison/Van Vogt (F&SF, Jan 1971)

This tells of a group of rogue ships which have enslaved individual humans within them to take care of them and perform maintenance duties. It is quite a melancholy tale, and tinged with a certain claustrophobia, since there is no way of knowing (in common with the human slaves) what human society is like outside of this system.
Ultimately though, there is an odd yet beautifully poetic ending.

Autumntime – A Lentini (Galaxy, Nov 1971)

An environmental tone-piece about a trip to see a tree, which, in the future, is a rare sight.

A Little Knowledge – Poul Anderson (Analog, Aug 1971)

Aggressive humans underestimate a quiet and obsequious alien whom they kidnap as a pilot for a ship which they plan to use for unimportant nefarious purposes.
One of those ‘twist in the tail’ pieces. Best SF of the year? Probably not.

To Make a New Neanderthal – W Macfarlane (Analog, Sep 1971)

Turning environmentalism on his head, Macfarlane posits a situation where pollution has helped to increase Humanity’s intelligence.

The Man Underneath – RA Lafferty – (If, Jan 1971)

Lafferty here plays with words and text as easily as he plays with our imaginations. A tale, oddly reminiscent of ‘The Prestige’, in which a magician is haunted by an echo of himself.

Ornithanthropus – B Alan Burhoe (If, Nov 1971)

Nicely detailed view of a world where humans have been adapted to meet the conditions, rather than the other way around.

Rammer – Larry Niven (Galaxy, Nov 1971)

One of Niven’s corpsicle tales, in which a revived cryogenically frozen body is awakened, but only to be trained to pilot a seeder ship, travelling round the galaxy dropping biological packages on dead worlds in order to kick-start them into a biosphere.

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a review of the first edition, second printing.

The first entry in the extremely long-running "best of the year" series is very strong, although it does stumble at times. There are sure to be stories to appeal to a wide section of sci-fi readers -- those that like parodies, those into hard sci-fi, or "early" sci-fi. Many of these selections have wound up in many other sci-fi anthologies since 1972.

This is much, much shorter from the tiny-print on onion-skin behemoths of the Dozois years ... which maybe one reason why I liked it so much.

As always, your milage may vary.

Selections:

* "Forward: Alternative Possibilities" by Our Editor. Our Editor describes what sci-fi is and is not.
* "The Sliced-Crosswise Only-on-Tuesday World" by Philip Jose Farmer. One of Farmer's best stories ever, even if he was doing an O. Henry impersonation. A man who is only allowed to live on Tuesdays falls in love with a woman only allowed to live on Wednesdays.
* "Good News from the Vatican" by Robert Silverberg. This was the best short story winner of the Hugo, and found in many anthologies. I have no idea if Robert Harris read this before writing his 2016 bestseller Conclave, which was turned into a kick-ass film. Here, a robot is elected Pope.
* "I'll Be Waiting for You When the Swimming Pool is Empty" by James Triptree, Jr./Alice Hastings Bradley. At the time this anthology was published, no one knew that Triptree was a woman. It was known that Triptree had a devoted following among editors of sci-fi anthologies. Here, in one of her more cynical moods, she writes about a hippie kid on his gap year pretty much destroying everything.
* "The Power of the Sentence" by David M. Locked. As an English major, I can confirm that language is alive and we can lose control of it at any moment. In other words -- this was effing BRILLIANT.
* "The Wicked Flee" by Harry Harrison. This long alternative history story about the Catholic Church appears in other anthologies.
* "When You Hear the Tone" by Thomas N. Scotia. Rather saccharine tale of a dying old man in 1970 yelling into a phone that has him speaking to a woman from his past ... in the past. I wonder if any kids these days would remember calling to get the time.
* "Occam's Scalpel" by Theodore Sturgeon. Bless you, Theodore Sturgeon, for thinking that the world's richest man would only need to have $2 billion to change the world. Granted, $2 billion 1971 dollars equals about $16 billion today, but that's peanuts compared to how much Elon Musk is worth-- $450 billion. This was a really early story to extrapolate the effects of climate change, referred to in its first name, the greenhouse effect.
* "Hot Potato" by Burt K. Filer. Bizarre time-travel story where the military uses time travel to store ammo dumps. Meant to be funny, but isn't.
* "The Human Operators" by Harlan Ellison & A. E. Van Vogt. I'm amazed that the enfante terrible of sci-fi and horror managed to work with anyone else. Here we have an intelligent ship with a HAL-like mind, using a human slave to make repairs. Has the sex and violence of many Ellison stories.
* "Autumntime" by Anthony Lentini. A family goes sightseeing to see the last tree in America before it's cut down. Very short but effective little piece.
* "A Little Knowledge" by Poul Anderson. Very good story of three humans stealing an alien spaceship and kidnapping the pilot, who somewhat resembles a long-tailed Mogwai from Gremlins.
* "To Make a New Neanderthal" by W. MacFarlane. Del Ray makes it clear in his fawning introduction that he included this story because he's a fanboy of MacFarlane. Meant to be funny, it's instead nothing but a predictable diatribe against conservationists and environmentalists.
* "The Man Underneath" by R. A. Lafferty. Another piece of crap from the overrated Lafferty. This time, it's a gag that goes on far too long.
* "Ornithanthropus" by B. Alan Burhoe. A winged human, similar to a Native American, needs to capture a wild creature known as a skyhunter. This reads a lot like a Western, Native American going out to catch the King of the Wild Horses, only to find evil mustangers waiting to steal the stallion from him. Only, the leader of these flying horse theives is named Garp, and I couldn't help laughing through the rest of the story.
* "Rammer" by Larry Niven. This is a hard sci-fi banger, where a cancer patient from 1990 or so wakes up 200 years later in a different body, to discover he's a prisoner of the state. However, there may be a way out ...
* "The Science Fiction Yearbook" by Our Editor. This yearly review would become a major part of this anthology series when Dozois took over, and turned it into The Introduction From Hell. This much briefer essay about sci-fi in 1971 notes that magazines were on the way out, and novels were becoming more prominent.

[James Swenson · Rating 2 out of 5]

"It was OK." I had fun reading this anthology, but by the time I was finished, I had to look back at the table of contents to remember what I'd read, and found that most of it hadn't been that memorable.

[Timothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars.

[A B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some fun ones in here. The stories in here were very hit or miss. Others were not so good.

My favourite by far was the Van Vogt, Ellison one, which I could totally see as it's own standalone novel. Other high points for me included the Thomas N. Scortia story, the Silverberg story, and the Ted Sturgeon one. I found the rest of them either mid or forgettable. I straight up disliked the Macfarlene and Rafferty stories.