One Hundred And Two H-Bombs

by Thomas M. Disch

Everyone--even the generals--hated the non-war. It cost a great deal, and there was no profit in it: it was insane. Yet allmost all of the adults were too deeply tangled in the system that produced the non-war to see their way out. That was almost the definaition of being an adult: That you couldn't see the way out...

But the children were tied by no such fetters of attitude and preconception. And one hundred and two strangely gifted orphans saw a way out very clearly...

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

160 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Poet and cynic, Thomas M. Disch brought to the sf of the New Wave a camp sensibility and a sardonicism that too much sf had lacked. His sf novels include Camp Concentration, with its colony of prisoners mutated into super-intelligence by the bacteria that will in due course kill them horribly, and On Wings of Song, in which many of the brightest and best have left their bodies for what may be genuine, or entirely illusory, astral flight and his hero has to survive until his lover comes back to him; both are stunningly original books and both are among sf's more accomplishedly bitter-sweet works.

In later years, Disch had turned to ironically moralized horror novels like The Businessman, The MD, The Priest and The Sub in which the nightmare of American suburbia is satirized through the terrible things that happen when the magical gives people the chance to do what they really really want. Perhaps Thomas M. Disch's best known work, though, is The Brave Little Toaster, a reworking of the Brothers Grimm's "Town Musicians of Bremen" featuring wornout domestic appliances -- what was written as a satire on sentimentality became a successful children's animated musical.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was Disch's first short fiction collection, and he'd only been writing professionally for three or four years when it appeared in 1967. (The first US edition that I have appeared a couple of years later from Berkley and has slightly different contents.) It contains fourteen stories, several of them quite short in the tradition of Frederic Brown; what would today be called flash fiction. Ten of them first appeared in Fantastic (or its companion digest, Amazing Stories) which were edited by the under-appreciated Cele Goldsmith, who was the first editor to buy work from Disch, LeGuin, Zelazny, and several other writers who went on to become influential figures in the field. Invaded by Love is fittingly from New Worlds, perhaps the most renowned birthplace of sf's New Wave, and Bone of Contention, one of the most science fiction-y tales, improbably appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. The title story is the longest of the lot and is a very interesting time-travel and telepathy anti-war story with lots of twists and turns; it was nominated for a Nebula Award. I also enjoyed Final Audit, The Vamp, and The Sightseers. The book has a nice introduction from Harry Harrison and a groovy (it was the 1960s, I can say that) Paul Lehr cover.

[Bruce Reid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some predictable Twilight-Zone type twists weaken this collection of Early Disch, but a few haunting miniatures stand out: "5 Eggs," the humorous "The Vamp" which works by actually avoiding the twist it seems to set up, and particularly "The Return of the Medusae," which could slip without rupture into a collection of Borges.

[Lisa Eckstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't familiar with Disch, this year's FOGcon Honored Ghost, and I chose this short story collection as a quick way to get a sense of his work. I liked about half the stories but wasn't wild about the rest. However, I've been told Disch is more renowned as a novelist than a short story writer, and I'd definitely give one of his novels a try.

Many of the stories are fairly brief, mainly setting up a premise and then presenting a twist or two. One of the more effective of the very short ones is "The Demi-Urge", in which two aliens come to different conclusions after studying life on Earth. "The Sightseers" is a bit more involved and works several interesting turns into a story about wealthy people who extend their lives by having themselves frozen and woken up for only a day each century.

I tended to prefer the longer stories that take more time to develop the characters and concepts, although some develop for a bit too long. The title story, "102 H-Bombs", drags at first but gets good once the telepathy and time travel are introduced, then reaches a satisfying conclusion. My favorite story in the collection is "Final Audit", which kept me engaged and curious throughout while following the life of a bank clerk in Victorian England who is blessed and cursed with very limited powers of prophesy.

[David Allen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of these early stories are shaggy dog shorts, surprisingly silly for a writer who would attain Disch's stature. The whimsical "Dangerous Flags" is a hoot. Many of the other stories are fair to good. To my mind only "The Return of the Medusae," weighing in at a mere two pages, has a breath of mystery to it.

[Bruce Hammond · Rating 3 out of 5]

A couple of interesting stories.