Jesse’s Reviews > 100 Years of Science Fiction > Status Update

Finished the last story, The Voices of Time, by JG Ballard. It's hard to believe, but I think this might be the first Ballard I've ever read. This short story was ambitious. I think there might have been a few more ideas crammed into 31 pages than would really fit, but I can't bring myself to dislike it. Fascinating, hallucinatory, philosophical, and weird.

The penultimate story is Clarke's The Nine Billion Names of God. I really haven't read much Clarke. Only The Sentinel, which is the short story that became 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is ... y'know, fine. It definitely had that '1960's anthology sci-fi' feel. Not the most original story, and I didn't love it, but I really haven't sampled this author's work enough to get a true feel.

Finished The Quest for St. Aquin, by Thomas Boucher. This one's interesting. A somber story about religion, soul, faith, human frailty, & AI, its smartly written. However, it has a character that's a robot donkey, & they call it the 'robass', and that's so ridiculous it's hard to concentrate. Unintentional hilarity hurts the tone. Wasn't 'ass' in use to mean butt by the 60s? This was thought, and chuckle, provoking.

Got through the next story, Business as Usual, During Alterations, by Ralph Williams. Alarmingly prophetic. Like a lot of these. This is a great example of science-fiction-as-economic-philosophy, and will be of particular interest to Star Trek fans, because it discusses the implications of one of their most signature pieces of technology, the replicator.

Finished the next story, Splice of Life, by Sonya Dorman. A pretty forward-thinking 1964 story about medical science. This is a really interesting anthology.

The next story is 'The Equalizer', by Norman Spinrad, whose bio painted him as a decidedly utopian storyteller. I almost wish I hadn't known that going in, but it didn't hamper my enjoyment of the story. A fine little tale about the morality of war.

The section I just began, on new inventions, is kicked off by a little story by Ambrose Bierce, a humorist/philosopher/author I keep TRYING to get into but never getting around to it (which is a great thing about anthologies), and it's barely a story. It reads like a joke. Clocking in at less than 2 pages, it's a fun little think-piece.

Finished the 13th story, 'Nobody Bothers Gus,' by Algis Budrys. This, coming out in 1955, is arguably an early example of that most favorite of my favored micro-genres, the post-modern superhero story.

The next story is 'The Mindworm', by CM Kornbluth, a grisly little spook story that does a great job of straddling the line between modernist sci-fi and gothic horror. Reminds me of Neil Gaiman at his best, blending folklore with a straightforward, comic-book-style supervillain. Great fun.

Just read the story I grabbed this analogy for, What Ever Happened to Cpl. Cuckoo, by Gerald Kersh (1954). Apparently, it finds its way into League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I can see how, Cpl. Cuckoo IS a superhero, of sorts. The writing style reminded me a little of Roald Dahl's short subject work.