ISFDB link

Other reviews:¹
Algis Budrys, F&SF, March 1981
Theodore Sturgeon, The Twilight Zone, June 1981
George Kelley, GeorgeKelley.org
Various, Goodreads

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Editors, Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg

Fiction:
The Star Mouse • novelette by Fredric Brown ∗∗∗∗
The Wings of Night • short story by Lester del Rey ∗∗∗
Cooperate—Or Else! • novelette by A. E. van Vogt ∗
Foundation • novelette by Isaac Asimov ∗∗
The Push of a Finger • novella by Alfred Bester ∗
Asylum • novella by A. E. van Vogt ∗∗∗
Proof • short story by Hal Clement ∗∗∗
Nerves • novella by Lester del Rey ∗∗∗
Barrier • novella by Anthony Boucher ∗∗∗
The Twonky • novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett] ∗∗
QRM—Interplanetary • novelette by George O. Smith ∗∗
The Weapon Shop • novelette by A. E. van Vogt ∗∗∗∗
Mimic • short story by Donald A. Wollheim ∗∗∗

Non-fiction:
Introduction • by Martin H. Greenberg
Story introductions • by Martin H. Greenberg and Isaac Asimov

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I’d read most of this volume for last year’s Retro Hugo Awards so I thought, as with my last review, I might as well finish it off and write a relatively brief review here. Some of the stories have already been discussed at longer length in earlier posts.²

The fiction opens with The Star Mouse by Fredric Brown, which will be a pleasant discovery for those that like Reginald Bretnor’s ‘Papa Schimmelhorn’ stories. In this one Professor Oberburger, an Austrian scientist mit der funny accent (well, funny if you are not a German speaker), sends Mitkey the mouse on a rocket test flight. Mitkey lands on Prxl, an asteroid where there is an alien race observing humankind. The aliens increase Mitkey’s intelligence to more easily examine his memories and then, after deciding that humanity is a threat, send him back to Earth with a plan to increase the intelligence of all mice to hinder mankind’s development. A humorous gem.
The Wings of Night by Lester del Rey is an interesting piece for its time in that it is, ultimately, a story about tolerance of other races (although it was probably written before Pearl Harbour).
The story starts on a two-man spacecraft where one of the characters (“Slim” Lane) is an idealist and the other (“Fats” Welch) is greedy and racist (both stereotypically). The pair’s spaceship develops mechanical problems (caused by a hasty Martian repair) and they need to set down on the Moon. There they meet Lhin, the last surviving member of an ancient alien race whose people created the crater hundreds of millions of years ago. Lhin is a plant-like being, and cannot raise any new members of his nearly extinct race from seed for a lack of the element copper. The characters subsequently behave as you would expect them to, but the story ends on a suitably uplifting note.
This is written in a cruder pulp voice than some of the other del Rey stories I’ve read from this period (which read like more mainstream pieces) but I liked it well enough.
Cooperate—Or Else! by A. E. van Vogt is the second of the ‘Rull’ series and appears to be a rerun of the first. That earlier story had two humans fighting off inimical wildlife on an alien planet; this one has a human and an alien called an ewal trying to survive on yet another. As if that isn’t enough of a challenge the inimical Rull arrive later on.
I found it a bit of a struggle to get through this kitchen sink potboiler as my attention kept wandering, probably due to the fact it is little more than a collection of action sequences. It also reads like a clumsily written first draft and I don’t see why it is in the collection—it is not one of van Vogt’s best.
Foundation by Isaac Asimov is the opening story in the series of the same name, and begins with Hari Seldon at the last meeting of a group which has set up the Foundation, an organisation designed to use the science of psychohistory to guide humanity through the fall of the First Galactic Empire to the rise of the Second centuries later.
The story then moves forward to Terminus City fifty years later, where the city’s mayor, Salvor Hardin, is involved in a dispute with Pirenne, the Chairman of the Foundation board. Their disagreement is about how to deal with Anacreon, a solar system that has broken away from the Empire, and now threatens to occupy and annexe Terminus.
The rest of the story presents a good picture of the political infighting likely to occur in a declining Empire, but the story has real no ending.³ Instead, a hologram of Hari Seldon appears, Wizard of Oz-like, on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Foundation and explains a few things.
The next story in the series, Bridle and Saddle, is a better story and would have been a superior choice for this volume.
The Push of a Finger by Alfred Bester starts with a newspaperman in a future society that has strict stability laws being briefed by government officials. During one of these briefings the narrator manages to snoop around and he finds out that the building houses a huge prognostication machine that can see into the future. He also discovers that the Chief of Stability and his scientists have discovered that the Universe ends a thousand years from now, after a secret experiment is initiated on a spaceship. The rest of the story has the Chief of Stability, narrator and others viewing events as they work back in time from the end of the Universe: they hope to find a key event they can alter to stop that sequence of events.
Although this story occasionally demonstrates several of the traits that would mark Bester’s work—such as the beginning where, unusually for the time, he directly addresses the reader—it takes ages to get going, and you are a quarter of the way through the story before you find out what it is going on. It is also badly written and is hugely padded. An inventive but contrived ending does not save it.
Asylum by A. E. van Vogt Asylum by A. E. van Vogt opens on a spaceship with a male Dreegh reviving a female. They are approaching Earth, which is apparently watched by a Galactic Observer, and they are hoping to slip past undetected to get the human blood and life force they need to survive. After landing the pair attack a passing couple and feed on them.
The point of view then switches to a reporter called Leigh, who is covering the murder of the couple for his paper. He examines the bodies of the couple at the morgue, and notes the marks on the neck and their burnt lips (where their life force was extracted).
The rest of this is essentially a space-vampire potboiler where the Dreegh try to find and eliminate the Observer so their race can invade the solar system. After the half-way point this begins to make less and less sense but the ending reveals Leigh (spoiler) is a personality overlay for a Galactic Observer superman with an IQ of 1200 and Dreegh killing superpowers.
This transcendent boot-strap ending doesn’t make it a great story but it will, for readers like me, perhaps make it a fairly good one.
Proof by Hal Clement is a hard SF story about aliens who dwell in our sun. On a trip to the core from the floating cities in the photosphere, Captain Kron finds that one of the passengers is a scientist who is gathering data to prove that there is no such thing as a “solid.” Kron then tells him a story about his space-faring days in the solar system when a sister ship crashed into something that shouldn’t have been there.
Later we find out that the unknown object is Earth, and the story switches to the point of view of a prospector in the outback who witnesses Kron’s sister ship crash and then explode with catastrophic results.
Unlike most stories with exotic aliens, Clement underpins his debut with a lot of science.
Nerves by Lester del Rey is a well-known and perhaps prescient, if outdated, account of a nuclear power-plant accident that is eerily similar to those that occurred at Three Mile Island, etc.
The story starts with an accident at two of the reactors, and it later becomes apparent that a new process was being tested which could lead to an even more catastrophic disaster. The one man who knows what this process involved is trapped under the wreckage. Throughout all this del Rey creates a remarkably convincing and tense narrative, drip feeding bits of his made up nuclear physics in between the medical procedures that are taking place, all against a background of escalating danger.
This tale is pre-atomic bomb, of course, as can perhaps be gathered from early scenes that involve Doc Ferrel, the main character of the story, treating his workers with “salve” for their radiation burns before they go back to work. There is also, more generally, a fairly cavalier attitude to the possible catastrophic results of atomic power—something explained as a quid pro quo for the benefits. Some of the characters’ behaviour is very much of its time, too: the two doctors, Ferrel and Blake, have a snifter of brandy after several hours of work to pep themselves up, and later resort to shooting up morphine to keep awake!
The story is longer than it should be and has a padded and rather potboiler-ish middle section. Nevertheless, you can see why it was so popular at the time.
Barrier by Anthony Boucher is an overcomplicated story that involves a future world with a Barrier which is supposed to prevent time travellers from other ages disrupting their static society. Nevertheless, the protagonist of the story, Brent, manages to end up there. Part of the rest of the story concerns a small group repairing his time travel machine and returning to the past, where they hope to regroup and return to the future to prevent the activation of a second Barrier—Bent has apparently destroyed the first one. This is all rather confusing to be honest, and becomes even more so when they return to the future to stop the Second Barrier, only to be caught in an attack of future time-travellers.
Perhaps it is best not to worry too much about all the time travel shenanigans but enjoy the considerable fun that Boucher has with the linguistic drift exhibited by travellers from different time periods.
The Twonky by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore also starts with a time traveller, this one with partial amnesia, who unintentionally arrives in a radio-phonograph factory. His job in the future is building ‘Twonkies’ so he uses the material at hand to build one, and then has a nap. His amnesia clears shortly after he wakes up, and he disappears on his time machine, leaving behind a modified phonogram/twonky behind.
The phonogram is bought by a university lecturer and his wife and, after the latter leaves to visit her sister, things start to get weird. The phonograph/twonky starts acting like a robot, lighting the man’s cigarettes, doing the dishes, etc. However, (spoiler) matters take an ominous turn when it stops him reading certain books and listening to certain music, and generally prevents him from doing things it does not approve of. It does not end well.
Despite it winning the 1943 Retro Hugo Award, I found this, at best, an okay gimmick story, and thought it a lightweight run through of some of the ideas used in the much superior Mimsy Were the Borogroves (Astounding, February 1943, and in volume 5 of this series).
QRM—Interplanetary by George O. Smith is the first of the ‘Venus Equilateral’ series of stories about a relay station in space which is responsible for the solar system’s communication traffic. It starts with Don Channing, the station’s acting boss, being relieved by a political appointee who intends to make the operation more commercial.
The rest of the story focuses on the new boss’s increasingly disastrous decisions (men are laid off and replaced with automatics that can’t do the job, and the messaging system breaks down). Channing rides to the rescue but later finds a bigger problem with the air recycling system—purifying grasses in the centre of the station have been thrown out by the new boss (“weeds”), and the increasing carbon dioxide level may threaten their survival. The moral of the story is obviously that engineers and scientists should be left to get on with their jobs without management interference.
The story makes a good effort at trying to show a realistic future but it feels very dated indeed—modern unmanned communications satellites do what Venus Equilateral does, and there is a lot of heavy drinking and cheesy relationship stuff between Channing and Arden, his secretary.
The Weapon Shop by A. E. van Vogt is the second in his ‘Weapon Shops of Isher’ series, and it begins with the arrival of a Weapon Shop in a quiet neighbourhood where Fara, the protagonist and loyal subject of the Empress of Isher, and his wife are walking one evening. By the end of the story Fara goes from being a loyal citizen (he attempts to force entry to the treasonous Weapon Shop and arrest the owners), through the bankruptcy of his business, to finally returning to the Weapon Shops to use their parallel justice system.
During this he learns about how corrupt the Empire is and experiences the near-magical technology of the Weapon Shops (he encounters an abnormal doorknob on a Weapon Shop door which withdraws through his hand to prevent him entering; later, he stands in front of a huge Weapon Shop computer that appears to be tracking the status of the billions of people in the Empire).
I liked this a lot, in particular its almost dreamlike progression. It is probably van Vogt’s best story, and should have won the 1943 Retro Hugo.
Oh, a quick PS for other reviewers: just because it has one line that says “The right to buy weapons is the right to be free” doesn’t, I would suggest, necessarily make it “an NRA SF novel”, “anti-gun control”, or “libertarian”.⁴
Mimic by Donald A. Wollheim starts with reference to a strange man from the narrator’s childhood. Years pass and we learn that the narrator has grown up to become the curator in a museum where he spends his days mounting insects, etc. There follows a short section about mimicry in nature before the story swings back to the strange man and an incident at his lodgings. The narrator ends up going into his room with a policeman and the building’s janitor, where they find out (spoiler) that he is not human but a strange insect like being. The policeman then disturbs a nest in the room and hundreds of small beetle like insects escape. There is a twist ending where a predator that looks like part of the roof goes after the flying beetle like creatures the man has given birth to.
This isn’t entirely convincing but it’s not bad, and has an interesting weird science vibe.

There is the usual historical Introduction by Martin H. Greenberg, which ends with a useful summary of what was happening in the field that year:

In the real world it was another good year, even though most of the top writers (and many fans) would soon be soldiers or working in war-related industries and/or research.
No new science fiction magazines were born, but all of the existing American ones made it through the year with the exception of Stirring Science Stories, which expired in March.
In the real world, more important people made their maiden voyages into reality: Hal Clement with “Proof” and Robert Abernathy with “Heritage” in June; in October, George O. Smith with “QRM-Interplanetary,” and in December, E(dna) Mayne Hull with “The Flight That Failed.”
More wondrous things happened in the real world: Robert A. Heinlein (as Anson MacDonald) published “Beyond This Horizon” and “Waldo,” Jack Williamson (as Will Stewart) published “Collision Orbit,” the first of his excellent Seetee stories and Isaac Asimov began his classic Foundation series.
Death took Alexander Belyaev, one of the pioneer Russian science fiction writers.
But distant wings were beating as C. J. Cherryh, Samuel R. Delany, Langdon Jones, David Ketterer, Franz Rottensteiner, Douglas Trumbull, William Joe Watkins and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro were born.  p. 8-9

There are also the usual Story introductions by Martin H. Greenberg and Isaac Asimov.

I thought this was a weaker volume than the last one I read (volume 5, for 1943). Judging by the introduction the editors would have liked to include Waldo, and perhaps Jack Williamson’s Collision Orbit. (They previously stated they couldn’t get the rights for five Heinlein stories they wanted for volumes 2 and 3.)
I note in passing the publication dates of the stories (from Spring to December 1942) determine the order they appear in this volume, which gives it a peculiar progression: I’m not sure I’d open with a humorous piece—they can be hit or miss—and a more fitting end would have been van Vogt’s The Weapon Shop and not the relatively slight and minor Mimic.
For my own Best of 1942 volume, I think I’d carry out some radical surgery on this list. I’d definitely keep the Brown (The Star Mouse) and one van Vogt (The Weapon Shop), and definitely get rid of the Bester, the other two van Vogt stories, the Kuttner/Moore (The Twonky), the Smith (QRM—Interplanetary), and the Asimov (Foundation, which I’d replace with the sequel Bridle and Saddle). I’d probably keep del Rey’s Nerves but maybe lose his other story (The Wings of Night), and keep the Boucher (Barrier). I’m not sure about the Clement (Proof), but probably not. You don’t, I think, have to include writer’s first stories in these volumes, or the first stories in significant series.
What would I add? Well, look at my choices in the table below—note that this is not a final list as there is a lot from 1942 I still have not read.⁵  ●

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1. Algis Budry’s review (F&SF, March 1981, p. 51) of this volume follows a long review of George O. Smith’s The Complete Venus Equilateral. He says of Asimov and Greenberg’s volume, “The Boucher and the Bester aren’t very good, although everyone cites the Boucher as a seminal work and the Bester shows great promise. The rest are at worst exciting and propulsive, at best beautifully worked out examples of what the Golden Age could do.”
He says at the end of his review that, “Marty Greenberg tells me for sure that Isaac does indeed do a hell of a lot more than just lend his name, which means he’s losing money on every minute he spends at it.”

Sturgeon’s very short review (The Twilight Zone, June 1981, p. 10) says the book has an “interesting introduction”, that all of the stories are “very well selected”, and that the series “will be a landmark when it is done.”

2. Here are the links to the full reviews of stories I’ve covered before, for both the Greenberg/Asimov anthology, and for my own ‘Best of’ picks:

The Star Mouse • novelette by Fredric Brown (Planet Stories, Spring 1942)
The Wings of Night • short story by Lester del Rey (Astounding, March 1942)
Cooperate—Or Else! • novelette by A. E. van Vogt (Astounding, April 1942)
Foundation • novelette by Isaac Asimov (Astounding, May 1942)
The Push of a Finger • novella by Alfred Bester (Astounding, May 1942)
Asylum • novella by A. E. van Vogt (Astounding, May 1942)
Proof • short story by Hal Clement (Astounding, June 1942)
Nerves • novella by Lester del Rey (Astounding, September 1942)
Barrier • novella by Anthony Boucher (Astounding, September 1942)
The Twonky • novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett] (Astounding, September 1942)
QRM—Interplanetary • novelette by George O. Smith (Astounding, October 1942)
The Weapon Shop • novelette by A. E. van Vogt (Astounding, December 1942)
Mimic • short story by Donald A. Wollheim (Astonishing Stories, December 1942)

Waldo • novella by Robert A. Heinlein (Astounding, August 1942)
The Compleat Werewolf • novella by Anthony Boucher (Unknown Worlds, April 1942)
Goldfish Bowl • novelette by Robert A. Heinlein (Astounding, March 1942)
The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag • novella by Robert A. Heinlein (Unknown Worlds, October 1942)
The New One • short story by Fredric Brown (Unknown Worlds, October 1942)
The Goddess’ Legacy • short story by Malcolm Jameson (Unknown Worlds, October 1942)
Magician’s Dinner • novelette by Jane Rice (Unknown Worlds, October 1942)
The Elixir • novelette by Jane Rice (Unknown Worlds, December 1942)  ●

3. Asimov’s introduction to Foundation mentions the ending:

Naturally, I had no idea when I wrote the story what the future would hold for it. It began on August 1, 1941, when I presented John Campbell with the idea for a story involving the fall of the Galactic Empire written as a historical novel.
Campbell loved the idea so much that he wouldn’t dream of letting me write a single story about it. He insisted on an open-ended series after the fashion of Heinlein’s “Future History” series.
Campbell dazzled me into agreeing (I was always being dazzled by him) and on August 11, I began the story. It took me three weeks to write (I only wrote in my spare time for I was working toward my doctorate at Columbia at the time) and, uncertain whether Campbell might not change his mind about letting me do more stories in the series, I deliberately didn’t reveal the ending but let it hang. This made it certain that Campbell would either reject the story or demand a sequel.
He demanded a sequel.  p. 77

4. Ian Moore says this about a sequel, The Weapon Makers (which it “appears” he hasn’t read), in his blog post about the 2019 Retro Hugos:

The Weapon Makers meanwhile was serialised in 1943 and later revised. It appears to peddle some kind of libertarian political philosophy and explicitly supports the right of individuals to bear arms, making it an interesting example of NRA SF.

Yeah, that’s what the novel’s about. This viewpoint presumably comes from a quick skim of Jayme Lynn Blaschke’s online review of The Empire of Isher, which starts with this:

The National Rifle Association should give out a copy of The Empire of Isher with every new membership. Seriously. They’re fools if they don’t. I have never come across anything that more closely resembles an NRA-envisioned utopia than van Vogt’s The Weapon Makers and The Weapon Shops of Isher, collected here in an omnibus volume. Before you roll your eyes and scoff at the absurdity of a future crafted by Charleton Heston and his inner circle, consider the backdrop of van Vogt’s Isher universe. Even the Weapon Shops’ credo could be adopted by the gun lobby today without much fuss: The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.

The Wikipedia entry on The Weapon Shops of Isher is better informed and more balanced:

Van Vogt’s guns have virtually magical properties, and can only be used in self-defense (or for suicide).
The political philosophy of the Weapon Shops is minimalist. They will not interfere with the corrupt imperial monarchy of the Isher government, on the grounds that men always have a government of the type they deserve: no government, however bad, exists without at least the tacit consent of the governed. The mission of the Weapon Shops therefore is merely to offer single individuals the right to protect themselves with a firearm, or, in cases of fraud, access to a “Robin Hood” alternative court system that judges and awards compensation from large, imperial merchant combines to cheated individuals.

Wikipedia could also have mentioned the Weapon Shops’ explicit instructions to Fara, after their court judgement in his favour at the end of The Weapon Shop, to undertake no political action or activity against the Empire. Or that all this gun stuff is a tiny, tiny part of the entire series, which is essentially an evil empire versus the resistance story, with an immortal and aliens thrown in.
Wikipedia’s article on Libertarianism in the United States is here (the form of libertarianism I presume is being referenced in the above comments). Good luck with matching that up against the Weapon Shops’ philosophy and actions.

5. If you want a better idea of how this book measures up against what I might pick, and what other anthologists and the Retro Hugo voters chose, look at the table below.
The third column (G) lists Asimov and Greenberg’s choices with an ‘x’.
The fourth column (H) shows the story’s 1943 Retro Hugo award placing.
The fifth column (C) shows how many of the anthologies and/or polls used in the Classics of Science Fiction list included the story in their collections (note that this list is SF only and skews against fantasy)—minus the Asimov/Greenberg anthology and Retro Hugo Awards citations which have their own column.
The sixth column (O) shows inclusions in other major anthologies which are not on the COSF list (e. g., The Compleat Werewolf by Anthony Boucher appears in Unknown Worlds, ed. John W. Campbell, 1948, and The Fantasy Hall of Fame, ed. Robert Silverberg, 1998). These are worked out by me and I have not yet looked into this for all the stories.
The seventh column (S) shows my likely choices for a ‘Best of the Year’ with an ‘x’.
The last column (T) shows the total points that each story gets (they get a point for being in Asimov/Greenberg’s anthology, a point for the COSF anthologies/polls they are in, a point for any other major anthology they are in, a point for being a Retro Hugo finalist, and a point if they are one of my choices).
The table is initially sorted so the stories with the highest total are at the top. A good way to efficiently read the year’s short fiction may be to start at the top and work down until you get to the end of the 2-point stories.  Enjoy.  ●