Worlds of George O.

by George O. Smith

Contents:
Blind time --
The Planet mender --
The Catspaw --
Rat race --Meddler's moon --
Meddler's moon (radio script) --
In the cards --
History repeats --
The Big fix --
Fire, 2016 --
Understanding.

Genres: Science Fiction

352 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

George Oliver Smith (April 9, 1911 - May 27, 1981) (also known as Wesley Long) was an American science fiction author. He is not to be confused with George H. Smith, another American science fiction author.

Smith was an active contributor to Astounding Science Fiction during the Golden Age of Science Fiction in the 1940s. His collaboration with the magazine's editor, John W. Campbell, Jr. was interrupted when Campbell's first wife, Doña, left him in 1949 and married Smith.

Smith continued regularly publishing science fiction novels and stories until 1960. His output greatly diminished in the 1960s and 1970s when he had a job that required his undivided attention. He was given the First Fandom Hall of Fame award in 1980.

He was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers.

Smith wrote mainly about outer space, with such works as Operation Interstellar (1950), Lost in Space (1959), and Troubled Star (1957).

He is remembered chiefly for his Venus Equilateral series of short stories about a communications station in outer space. The stories were collected in Venus Equilateral (1947), which was later expanded as The Complete Venus Equilateral (1976).

His novel The Fourth "R" (1959) - re-published as The Brain Machine (1968) - was a digression from his focus on outer space, and provides one of the more interesting examinations of a child prodigy in science fiction.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

George O. Smith is remembered best in science fiction history for his classic Venus Equilateral, but this book collects ten of his other works from 1946-'67, including a novella, three short stories, half-a-dozen novelettes, with really amusing and interesting introductions and commentary about each one and autobiographical minutiae about the author at the time of writing. Smith was an electrical engineer who focused on hard-science technical/puzzle problems for his plots, so it's true science fiction but also suffers from the male-dominance of the fields of the time. A couple of the stories were published in Thrilling Wonder Stories magazine, and one each are from If and Galaxy, but all of the rest debuted in John Campbell's Astounding Stories. Of special note is Smith's radio script adaptation of Meddler's Moon that accompanies that novelette from a 1947 issue of Astounding; the dramatization was first aired by WOR in April of 1958. Also, the story Understanding includes a revised ending which was requested by editors Campbell and Frederik Pohl that was lost in the production offices for many years. Smith died before the book was published, but Pohl kept his humorous commentary intact and it's a fine historical read.

[Josiah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Old school scifi short stories. The author was an electrical engineer in real life, so instead of making up fictional technologies from scratch, his futuristic gadgets feel grounded in state of the art science.
Occasionally, that means that he has space ships that operate on vacuum-tubes, but that just adds to the retro feel.
Each story includes an introduction by the author sharing background on the story - what was going on in his life when he wrote it, how he got the idea for the story, etc. Since these stories span most of his career, it doubles as an autobiography of the author, and often mentions some of his other writer friends. I enjoyed this as much as the stories themselves.
Fans of this should check out his other collection: The Complete Venus Equilateral

[Todd · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I was far more interested in the author's real world autobiographical intros to each story than I was in the stories themselves. Way too many instances where there's a "surprise!" reveal or some other gimmick, that grows old once you pick up on the author's tells. Yes, the main protagonist is actually the grandson of the Obligatory Female Character! The dog is smart and understands and speaks English! Time travel is a lark, super intelligent animals are a hoot, a little harmless sexism is fine, and everything gets wrapped up in neat little packages of mid-century "Mad Men"-style misogynistic-lite whimsy. Ugh.

[Metaphorosis · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
Part memoir and part story collection, this gathers several George O. Smith stories along with tales of his interaction with John W. Campbell and others.

Review
Purporting to be a collection of George O. Smith stories, the book does double duty as a rough and ready memoir along the lines of The Early Asimov. Unfortunately, where Asimov succeeded at both, Smith’s is decidedly firing on only one chamber.

As a memoir, Worlds of George O. is an interesting first-hand view of the Golden Age of science fiction and especially of John W. Campbell (so closely are they linked that Smith steals away Campbell’s wife, and they continue to collaborate) and L. Ron Hubbard. It’s a story of a time when real engineers wrote the SF stories, giving them credibility and heft. And Smith is such an engineer, moving from one technical job to another during and after wartime, often living with one SF friend or another. His recollections are a bit scattershot, but interesting nonetheless.

I’m sorry to say that his stories are also from a time when real engineers (who were men) wrote stories about heroes (who were men) rescuing people (who were women) and explaining science to them (but not expecting them to understand it). I’m willing to forgive quite a lot to take into account the time a book was written (just as I forgive quite a lot now), and the sexism (while hard to overlook) is not really what bothers me. Instead, the problem is, simply, that the stories just aren’t very good. Where Smith’s memoir interludes feel honest and interesting, the fiction is often muddled and half-baked. It didn’t help me that almost all of the stories are, in one way or another, about time travel – a trope I detest – and that Smith falls into the same traps as everyone else (even allowing for him being an early victim). He often notes that he wrote the stories for a buck, and that’s what they feel like.

If you’re interested in Campbell, this may give you another view of how he operated. But if you’re just looking for good SF stories, I can’t recommend this.