The Power of Illusion

by Christopher Anvil

Science Fiction by a Master of Humorous Adventure. The Power of Mighty Starfleet Armadas Can be Undone in an Instant . . . by the Subtle Power of Illusion.

A new collection of stories by the master of humorous science fiction adventure,

· The full-length novel, The Day the Machines Stopped —and what happens, not just to civilization, but to humanity and its chances of survival when all the machines stop working at once?

· A man is captured by aliens who are investigating the Earth as a possible target for colonization. The aliens have science and technology far in advance of humans—but, unfortunately for them, they have never developed the human art of bluffing .

· For the first time in book form, Anvil’s stories of Richard Verner, who is called in to solve apparently insoluble problems, such as explaining why experimental missiles keep failing for no apparent reason, or locating a kidnapped judge, or even solving an inexplicable murder that’s interrupting his vacation.

And much more, in a generous volume of sardonically humorous science fiction.

Genres: Science Fiction, Collections, Fiction, Humor

464 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2010

About the author

Christopher Anvil was a pseudonym used by author Harry C. Crosby. He began publishing science fiction with the story "Cinderella, Inc." in the December 1952 issue of the science fiction magazine Imagination. By 1956, he had adopted his pseudonym and was being published in Astounding Magazine.

Anvil's repeated appearances in Astounding/Analog were due in part to his ability to write to one of Campbell's preferred plots: alien opponents with superior firepower losing out to the superior intelligence or indomitable will of humans. A second factor is his stories are nearly always humorous throughout. Another was his characterization and manner of story crafting, where his protagonists slid from disaster to disaster with the best of intentions, and through exercise of fast thinking, managed to snatch victory somehow from the jaws of defeat.

Reviews

[Stefanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

For me only the first chunk of short stories (Research East) was really interesting to read, the rest weren't good.

[Karina · Rating 4 out of 5]

It takes me a while to get through a collection of short stories. I bought this book years ago, never finished, until just recently. It was good though.

Some reviewers commented that there's not a lot of characterization or other detail, that stories mostly describe an idea... Well I like to think that the author leaves things up to your imagination, to work out the details, to ponder. Not that I did that for every story, but I enjoyed the sort of open-endedness of some of them.

[David Marshall · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you want to journey into the past to see what we used to read, this is as a good a starting point as any. But, be warned. These are essentially plot ideas with little or no characterisation. Some of the ideas are quite clever but the general level of storytelling is poor by modern standards.

http://opionator.wordpress.com/2011/0...

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good collection of short stories and a couple of novellas.

[Luigi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea

[Michael Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great selection of old tales from a sci-fi author of the golden era when just about any idea was workable irregardless of logic. Mystery short tales were good.

[Tim Hicks · Rating 2 out of 5]

As David Marshall noted here, this material reflects when it was written, and has a different style than we see in more recent works.

Some of them stick close to the idea that a short story should be about one idea. Perhaps too close. But most of the short ones had a dry humour to them and were worth the time they took.

I might have gone with three stars if the final story - the title story - hadn't sold itself out with a solution that was built up for the entire story and turned out to seriously disappointing. Let's just say that we get a vague description of what the illusion was, but nothing - NOTHING - about how it was done. Call that a spoiler if you like, but I think readers deserve to be warned when an author promises and doesn't deliver. There's also a ridiculous prophecy of the worst kind: the kind with micro-fine details that of course line up perfectly with what is really happening. Luckily for us, Anvil doesn't present most of the prophecy excerpts until after that have been met. Too bad, because it was a quite decent example of the old standing-on-the-castle-wall-facing-a-huge-enemy-army trope. And that's wrapped in a good idea about a very special ring.

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The few Anvil stories I read before this volume were all brilliant. But this volume left me feeling very let down. The first third is an apocalyptic novel about a world where electricity stops working. It's not bad, but it's overly pulpy, and doesn't have anything really new in it. The second third consists of some of weird detective (?) stories. Some are solid, some are poor, none are really excellent. The last third of the book has a few gems (The Coward, High Road to the East, In the Light of Further Data, Apron Chains) but a lot of middling stories. Ultimately, this is volume 8 out of 8 of his collected works, and it really just feels like the bottom of the barrel.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a contradiction. Some of the science is almost impossible to accept enough to suspend disbelief, but the wonderful storytelling is just that. And I still don;t think you can ruin electricity and magnetism without killing off all sentient life.

[Pete731 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good collection of stories by a classic SF author. Very dated in some ways, but nice return to classic golden age science fiction.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories aged pretty well, but I wanted more of Cardan's world.