ORBIT – Otherworldly Reads, Bold Ideas, and Tales. SF & F Short Stories and Novelettes discussion

Among some of the old paperbacks I've found recently is The Many Worlds of Barry Malzberg. It's the 4th collection of his,shot at 159 pages, released in 1975. It sounded very interesting to me; while I've not read him before, he seems like a different sort of author. Contents:

Initiation - C - two Satanists face each other down over how to expand
Management
The Union Forever
Reconstitution
Final War - apparently one of the best-known of his works
Closed Sicilian - a chess game over the fate of the universe
After the Unfortunate Accident
The Second Short Shortest Fantasy Story Ever Published
In the Cup
Death to the Keeper - also well-known
Chronicles of a Comer

The only Malzberg collection I have is half an Ace Double published in the early 70s under the pen name K.M. O’Donnell, In the Pocket and Other S-F Stories / Gather in the Hall of the Planets. I read it a few years ago. Malzberg wrote a ton of short stories, I probably should seek out more. He was indeed a highly individual writer.

Management - B - Robot child care, dealing with a difficult, anti-social child

The Union Forever - B - The computer that governs the country looks at different possibilities

Reconstitution - C - A bit confusing, dealing with the relationship of a son and his father

I vaguely recall the name but cannot pinpoint what I've read by him. Checked here https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?534
(it turns out that he passed away just last December) and there are a few stories by him plus his interviews on YouTube (I haven't watched any yet)

He also wrote some interesting nonfiction about the genre and was a distinguished anthologist. Well worth checking out. Those interview videos would probably be worthwhile.

These are the first stories I've read by him, and if they are representative, he's got unique ideas & a slightly off-kilter perspective. I'd liken him to Norman Spinrad at this point.

Final War - A- - Possibly his most noted piece. A satire on war, it's been compared to Catch-22.

Closed Sicilian - B+ - Two beings play chess for the fate of the universe.

After the Unfortunate Accident - A- - Punch line story of a young man who finds himself in a movie theater after dying.

The Second Shortest Fantasy Story Ever Published - C- - Just a few paragraphs, not much to it.

I have to get to these stories

In the Cup - B In a world where religion is considered insanity, one man refuses to abandon it.

Death to the Keeper - ? This one is apparently also well-known but I was completely baffled by it.

Chronicles of a Comer - C+Another man in a religious crisis.

Finished. Irony is a strong point of Malzberg's, even to the point of humor.

Thanks for reviewing!

You're welcome! I haven't contributed much to this group's original intent of the Hugo-winning stories, but I'm glad you all have gotten me back into short stories. It's been decades since I've read any collections, so I'm going to try and stick to that. This one was interesting, Malzberg has a unique voice, ideas, style.

I decided to get an ebook by him and found out that Rosetta Stone published 20+ with him as an editor of The Galaxy project - longer prose from Galaxy magazine, including stories of C.M. Kornbluth, e.g. The Marching Morons: The Galaxy Project, Book 4

I have a couple of his anthologies as editor: The End of Summer: Science Fiction of the Fifties and Neglected visions. Both collect relatively less famous old stories. I read and enjoyed the former some time ago but only picked up the latter after Malzberg’s recent passing, haven’t read it yet. Both worthwhile, I imagine.