Summary:
I was stunned to find that I was eight stories into this volume before I found a worthy choice: Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes. Thereafter the other worthwhile candidates are A Death in the House by Clifford D. Simak, The Sound Sweep by J. G. Ballard, The Man Who Lost the Sea by Theodore Sturgeon, Plentitude by Will Mohler a.k.a. Will Worthington, and possibly A Day at the Beach by Carol Emshwiller.
The Ray Bradbury, Cordwainer Smith, Jack Finney, Fritz Leiber and Avram Davidson stories are okay, I guess, but much of the rest is slight, gimmicky material (apart from two clunky Analog-type novelettes from Randall Garrett and Mark Clifton), nearly all of which comes from non-genre publications.
You get the feeling that Merril was riding around the far boundaries of the field rounding up strays rather than compiling a ‘Best of the Year’ anthology. One to miss.
[ISFDB page][Book link]

Other reviews:¹
Austin Beeman, Science Fiction Short Story Reviews
Alfred Bester, F&SF, February 1961
Everett F. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction pp. 295 – 454
John Carnell, New Worlds Science Fiction #101, December 1960
S. E. Cotts, Amazing Stories, March 1961
P. Schuyler Miller, Analog, March 1961
Various, Goodreads

_____________________

Editor, Judith Merril

Fiction:
The Handler • short story by Damon Knight ∗
The Other Wife • short story by Jack Finney ∗∗
No Fire Burns • short story by Avram Davidson ∗∗
No, No, Not Rogov! • short story by Cordwainer Smith ∗∗
The Shoreline at Sunset • short story by Ray Bradbury ∗∗
The Dreamsman • short story by Gordon R. Dickson ∗
Multum in Parvo • short story by Jack Sharkey ∗∗
Flowers for Algernon • novelette by Daniel Keyes ∗∗∗∗∗
A Death in the House • novelette by Clifford D. Simak ∗∗∗∗
Mariana • short story by Fritz Leiber ∗∗
An Inquiry Concerning the Curvature of the Earth’s Surface and Divers Investigations of a Metaphysical Nature • short story by Roger Price –
Day at the Beach • short story by Carol Emshwiller ∗∗∗
What the Left Hand Was Doing • novelette by Randall Garrett [as by Darrell T. Langart] ∗
The Sound Sweep • novelette by J. G. Ballard ∗∗∗+
Plenitude • short story by Will Mohler [as by Will Worthington] ∗∗∗+
The Man Who Lost the Sea • short story by Theodore Sturgeon ∗∗∗+
Make a Prison • short story by Lawrence Block ∗
What Now, Little Man? • novelette by Mark Clifton ∗∗

Non-fiction:
Introduction • essay by Judith Merril
Story Introductions • by Judith Merril
“What Do You Mean … Human?” • essay by John W. Campbell, Jr.
Sierra Sam • essay by Ralph Dighton
Hot Argument • poem by Randall Garrett
Me • poem by Hilbert Schenck [as by Hilbert Schenck, Jr.]
The Year’s S-F, A Summary • essay by Judith Merril
Honorable Mentions • list by Judith Merril

_____________________

[These story reviews were posted previously on sfshortstories.com. If you have already read them skip down to the ••• for the non-fiction and conclusion.]

After Merril’s brief Introduction (of which more later) the volume opens with The Handler by Damon Knight (Rogue, August 1960). This sees a TV actor called Pete go into a bar and glad-hand all the people who have just finished work on a successful TV show, ending with these individuals:

“Sol and Ernie and Mack, my writers, Shakespeare should have been so lucky—” One by one, they came up to shake the big man’s hand as he called their names; the women kissed him and cried. “My stand-in,” the big man was calling out, and “my caddy,” and “now,” he said, as the room quieted a little, people flushed and sore-throated with enthusiasm, “I want you to meet my handler.”  p. 11

At this point Pete becomes motionless, and a dwarf—his “handler”—climbs out of Pete’s body. The party cools, and everyone drifts away. The dwarf is called Fred and he tries to chat to people but is either ignored or rebuffed (as well as his physical appearance he is nowhere as extrovert a personality as Pete). Then, while Fred is having a beer and trying to be friendly, one of the writers bluntly suggests that he gets back inside Pete. When Fred does this Pete comes to life, and the party restarts.
After his initial appearance Fred is variously described as “little man”; “was a very small man, almost a dwarf, stoop-shouldered and roundbacked in a sweaty brown singlet and shorts”; “had a perspiring brown face under a shock of black hair”; “was about forty, with a big nose and big soft brown eyes”; “his voice was cracked and uncertain”. Fred also has “knobby hands”; “sad hound-dog eyes”, etc. If Knight was trying to make the wider point that people react to our outer selves rather than our inner ones, he rather buries this idea under a mass of description that appears to make the piece about little more than people’s reaction to other’s physical attractiveness (and possibly manner).
The whole idea struck me a bit silly.
∗ (Mediocre). 1,600 words.

•

The Other Wife by Jack Finney (Saturday Evening Post, January 30^th, 1960) starts with a fairly stereotypical husband-wife encounter—she’s prattling on about her knitting and he’s day-dreaming about a sports car—which eventually devolves into a mild spat. During the early stages of this encounter the husband discovers a 1958 Woodrow Wilson coin in his change: this becomes significant later.
The next part of the story sees the husband transported to an alternate world where, after seeing a “Coco-Coola” sign, he notices other changes (the cars are all black, and they are of different makes) before discovering the most significant difference on his arrival back at his apartment—which is that he is married to another woman.
He later realises that she is an ex-girlfriend of his, although this takes some time, and after some slight hesitation he picks up where he left off. He subsequently enjoys a honeymoon period with his other wife and during this also has the pleasure of finding new books that exist in this world but not in his own:

There on the revolving metal racks were the familiar rows of glossy little books, every one of which, judging from the covers, seemed to be about an abnormally well-developed girl. Turning the rack slowly I saw books by William Faulkner, Bernard Glemser, Agatha Christie, and Charles Einstein, which I’d read and liked. Then, down near the bottom of the rack my eye was caught by the words, “By Mark Twain.” The cover showed an old side-wheeler steamboat, and the title was South From Cairo. A reprint fitted out with a new title, I thought, feeling annoyed; and I picked up the book to see just which of Mark Twain’s it really was. I’ve read every book he wrote—Huckleberry Finn at least a dozen times since I discovered it when I was eleven years old.
But the text of this book was new to me. It seemed to be an account, told in the first person by a young man of twenty, of his application for a job on a Mississippi steamboat. And then, from the bottom of a page, a name leaped out at me. “‘Finn, sir,’ I answered the captain,” the text read, “‘but mostly they call me Huckleberry.’”
For a moment I just stood there in the drugstore with my mouth hanging open; then I turned the little book in my hands. On the back cover was a photograph of Mark Twain; the familiar shock of white hair, the mustache, that wise old face. But underneath this the brief familiar account of his life ended with saying that he had died in 1918 in Mill Valley, California. Mark Twain had lived eight years longer in this alternate world, and had written—well, I didn’t yet know how many more books he had written in this wonderful world, but I knew I was going to find out. And my hand was trembling as I walked up to the cashier and gave her two bits for my priceless copy of South From Cairo.  pp. 25-26

This part of the story, and his realisation about what the odd coins in his change do—see below—is probably the best of it.
In a few months, of course, the shine eventually comes off his new relationship and, while checking his change one night, he finds a Roosevelt coin. He realises that it was the Woodrow Wilson one which transported him to this world—and that the Roosevelt will let him return.
The story ends with him back in his own world where no time has passed. He has a second honeymoon period with his first wife and then, later, finds another Woodrow Wilson coin in his change . . . .
I guess, overall, this story is okay, but it’s essentially shallow New Yorker froth where a bigamous husband has his cake and eats it. A pity, because there is a better story here about how the shine comes off of new relationships and marriages, and of the possibilities of the road not taken. (And hopefully a story which explains the reason there isn’t already a husband in the alternate world.)
∗∗ (Average). 5,850 words.

•

No Fire Burns by Avram Davidson (Playboy, July 1959) opens with a Mr Melchior and his personnel manager, Mr Taylor, driving to lunch with a psychologist, Dr Colles. Melchior tells Colles about an otherwise normal man who murdered a rival just to secure a promotion, and goes on to ask Colles to produce a test that will weed out such individuals from his company.
Inserted into this strand of the narrative is a section about an employee of Melichor’s called Joe Clock, who has borrowed money from a workmate but, as we see, has no intention of paying it back. Joe later completes the psychological screening test that Colles develops:

There are lots worse crimes than murder. Probably . . . Sure. Lots worse. The average person will do anything for money. Absolutely right they would. Why not, if you can get away with it? Sure. And the same way, that’s why you got to watch out for yourself.
There are worse things than losing your home. What? Catching leprosy?
And then the way to answer the question changed. Now you had to pick out an answer. Like, Most people who hit someone with their car at night would (a) report to the police first (b) give first aid (c) make a getaway if possible. Well, any damn fool would know it was the last. In fact, anyone but a damn fool would do just that. That’s what he did that time. (c)
Now, a dope like Aberdeen: he’d probably stop his car. Stick his nose in someone else’s tough luck. Anybody stupid enough to lend his rent money—  p. 38-39

The story develops further (spoiler) when Colles notices, having completed the work some weeks before, problematic mentions of Melchior and his ex-employees in the newspapers. He then discovers that nearly all the company men shown by the test to have psychopathic tendencies are still employed.
Colles confronts Melchior with this information—and then asks to work for him (there are a couple of earlier hints in the story that Colles is fairly amoral). The story finishes with a biter-bit ending where the personnel manager Taylor (another one of the story’s many psychopaths) has Melchior and Colles shot by Joe Clock and another man.
This is well enough told, and interesting enough, but the idea is barely credible. And some will see where the plot is going, or be unsurprised when they get there.
∗∗ (Average). 6,350 words.

•

No, No, Not Rogov! by Cordwainer Smith (If, February 1959) is supposedly one of his ‘Instrumentality of Mankind’ stories, although the connection seems to be limited to a brief prologue where a golden dancer performs some sort of rapturous dance in the year AD 13,582. The bulk of the story, however, concerns itself with two Soviet scientists who are undertaking a highly secret project to develop a telepathic helmet. The pair are a married couple, Rogov (the husband) and Cherpas (the wife), who have two minders, Gausgofer (a woman who is in love with Rogov) and Gauck (a constantly expressionless man).
Their work takes place during the reigns of Stalin and Khrushchev, and they have early success in using the device to see through other people’s eyes, although the pair are never entirely sure who they are looking through or where they are. The experiment comes close to a conclusion when Rogov has a needle inserted into the top of his own head to get direct access to his optic nerve (Gauck ordering the execution of the prisoners they experiment on after a week of use has hitherto limited what they can achieve). Of course (spoiler), when the machine is connected and switched on, we see that the device operates through time as well as space, and Rogov sees the dancer in the future and goes mad:

He became blind to the sight of Cherpas, Gausgofer, and Gauck. He forgot the village of Ya. Ch. He forgot himself. He was like a fish, bred in stale fresh water, which is thrown for the first time into a living stream. He was like an insect emerging from the chrysalis. His twentieth-century mind could not hold the imagery and the impact of the music and the dance.
But the needle was there and the needle transmitted into his mind more than his mind could stand.
The synapses of his brain flicked like switches. The future flooded into him.
He fainted.
Cherpas leaped forward and lifted the needle. Rogov fell out of the chair.  p. 61

Rogov is subsequently examined by doctors but cannot be roused, nor is he later when a deputy minister from Moscow arrives with more experts. Gausgofer suggests repeating the experiment to see if she can learn something that will help recover Rogov, but is similarly affected—and she also stands up at the moment of contact, altering the needle’s position in her brain which kills her. Cherpas subsequently tells the minister that she eavesdropped on Rogov’s connection using the old equipment, and that her husband saw something unbelievably hypnotic in the far future.
The story concludes with Gauck telling the minister that the experiment is over (which I didn’t find entirely convincing, i.e. a functionary telling a Soviet deputy minister what to do).
There is probably a reasonable mainstream story about Soviet era scientists and secret police buried in this piece, but the SF parts seem like an afterthought, and the idea of someone going mad because they watch the AD 13,582 version of Strictly Come Dancing seems rather fanciful.
∗∗ (Average). 6,500 words.

•

The Shoreline at Sunset by Ray Bradbury (F&SF, March 1959) begins with two men on the beach prospecting for lost change. We discover that they share a house, and watch as their discussion turns to the stream of women (and unsuccessful relationships) that have passed through their lives. Tom suggests to Chico that they may have more romantic success if they live apart, just before they are interrupted by a boy saying that he has found a mermaid. The men soon find themselves looking at a seemingly alive but unconscious creature that is half woman, half fish:

The lower half of her body changed itself from white to very pale blue, from very pale blue to pale green, from pale green to emerald green, to moss and lime green, to scintillas and sequins all dark green, all flowing away in a fount, a curve, a rush of light and dark, to end in a lacy fan, a spread of foam and jewel on the sand. The two halves of this creature were so joined as to reveal no point of fusion where pearl woman, woman of a whiteness made of creamwater and clear sky, merged with that half which belonged to the amphibious slide and rush of current that came up on the shore and shelved down the shore, tugging its half toward its proper home. The woman was the sea, the sea was woman. There was no flaw or seam, no wrinkle or stitch; the illusion, if illusion it was, held perfectly together and the blood from one moved into and through and mingled with what must have been the ice-waters of the other.  p. 72

Chico decides that they can sell the creature to an exhibition or a carnival, and rushes off to get a truck full of ice; Tom is more ambivalent, and (spoiler) stays behind to watch over the creature—but does nothing when the waves gradually wash the mermaid back into the sea.
I thought perhaps the mermaid was a metaphor for the women or the relationships that the men can’t keep but, whatever the story is about, it is typical of later Bradbury, i.e. more a prose poem than a story.
∗∗ (Average). 3,350 words.

•

The Dreamsman by Gordon R. Dickson (Star Science Fiction #6, 1959) begins with a Mr Willer shaving, until:

[He] poises the razor for its first stroke—and instantly freezes in position. For a second he stands immobile. Then his false teeth clack once and he starts to pivot slowly toward the northwest, razor still in hand, quivering like a directional antenna seeking its exact target. This is as it should be. Mr. Willer, wrinkles, false teeth and all, is a directional antenna.  p. 78

Shortly afterwards, Willer goes to a house and confronts the couple who live there, stating that they are telepaths who are transmitting. After he manages to win their confidence (admitting in the process that he is almost two hundred years old) he tells the couple that he can take them to a colony of similarly talented people. They then drive to a military base and, after Willer has hypnotised his way past the soldiers and guards, reach a spaceship that will supposedly take the couple to Venus.
At this point (spoiler) a man dressed in silver mesh arrives and reveals that Willer routinely disposes of psi-capable people so Earth people won’t evolve and be admitted into Galactic Society (of which the silver-mesh man is a representative). The reason? Mr Willer likes things the way they are.
An unconvincing squib that is a collection of worn out clichés.
∗ (Mediocre). 2,850 words.

•

Multum in Parvo by Jack Sharkey (The Gent, December 1959)² isn’t actually a short story but a quartet of vignettes that each end in a pun (or two, or have them all the way through)—Feghoots, as I believe they are called in the SF field.³
The first, Robots, is a fairly straightforward piece involving the construction of a card-playing robot in 1653, which builds to a decent single pun ending; the second, Aircraft, has Icarus flying towards the sun with a double pun ending, both of which are both okay; the third, Vampirism, really goes for it, and has eight puns (maybe more) on the way through—this is the best of the four by country mile; the last one, Atomic Fission, has a decent single pun ending and a coda about fallout that I didn’t get (the Vampirism one would have made for a stronger finish).
I’m not big on puns but this was okay, with the third section having considerably more bite than the others. Boom, tish.
∗∗ (Average). 1,050 words.

•

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (F&SF, April 1959) is another story I’ve read recently (and several times before that). The story consists of the diary entries of Charlie Gordon, whose level of intelligence is well below average. However, he wants to improve himself:

Miss Kinnian told that I was her bestist pupil in the adult nite scool becaus I tryed the hardist and I reely wantid to lern. They said how come you went to the adult nite scool all by yourself Charlie. How did you find it. I said I askd pepul and sumbody told me where I shud go to lern to read and spell good. They said why did you want to. I told them becaus all my life I wantid to be smart and not dumb. But its very hard to be smart. They said you know it will probly be tempirery. I said yes. Miss Kinnian told me. I dont care if it herts.  pp. 92-93

This latter refers to an experimental procedure that Drs Strauss and Nemur have developed which will, if successful, quadruple Charlie’s IQ from 68 to well over two hundred.
The story follows Charlie through his initial assessment tests (where he loses to a mouse called Algernon in a maze test), the procedure itself, and then his increasing intelligence. During this latter period we see Charlie back at work, and realise his is the unwitting butt of his co-workers’ jokes:

We had a lot of fun at the factery today. Joe Carp said hey look where Charlie had his operashun what did they do Charlie put some brains in. I was going to tell him but I remembered Dr Strauss said no.
Then Frank Reilly said what did you do Charlie forget your key and open your door the hard way. That made me laff. Their really my friends and they like me.  p. 97

Charlie’s mistreatment is a running thread through the story, and surfaces again when he wakes up covered in bruises after a night at the bar, and once more when his teacher Miss Kinnian reads some of his diary entries. This subplot climaxes when Charlie, his intelligence massively increased, is in a restaurant—but not in the way you would expect:

May 20 I would not have noticed the new dishwasher, a boy of about sixteen, at the corner diner where I take my evening meals if not for the incident of the broken dishes.
They crashed to the floor, shattering and sending bits of white china under the tables. The boy stood there, dazed and frightened, holding the empty tray in his hand. The whistles and catcalls from the customers (the cries of “hey, there go the profits!” . . . “Mazeltov!” . . . and “well, he didn’t work here very long . . .” which invariably seem to follow the breaking of glass or dishware in a public restaurant) all seemed to confuse him.
When the owner came to see what the excitement was about, the boy cowered as if he expected to be struck and threw up his arms as if to ward off the blow.
“All right! All right, you dope,” shouted the owner, “don’t just stand there! Get the broom and sweep that mess up. A broom . . . a broom, you idiot! It’s in the kitchen. Sweep up all the pieces.”
The boy saw that he was not going to be punished. His frightened expression disappeared and he smiled and hummed as he came back with the broom to sweep the floor. A few of the rowdier customers kept up the remarks, amusing themselves at his expense.
“Here, sonny, over here there’s a nice piece behind you . . .”
“C’mon, do it again . . .”
“He’s not so dumb. It’s easier to break ‘em than to wash ’em . . .”
As his vacant eyes moved across the crowd of amused onlookers, he slowly mirrored their smiles and finally broke into an uncertain grin at the joke which he obviously did not understand.
I felt sick inside as I looked at his dull, vacuous smile, the wide, bright eyes of a child, uncertain but eager to please. They were laughing at him because he was mentally retarded.
And I had been laughing at him too.
Suddenly, I was furious at myself and all those who were smirking at him. I jumped up and shouted, “Shut up! Leave him alone! It’s not his fault he can’t understand! He can’t help what he is! But for God’s sake . . . he’s still a human being!  pp. 112-113

There is much more than this going on in the story but, this time around, the passage above struck me as a particularly anti-Marching Morons moment.
The rest of the piece (spoiler) charts Algernon the mouse’s decline and death, and then we watch as Charlie loses his intelligence too. Throughout this tragic arc one of the few positives is that the workers who previously tormented him at the factory become his protectors when Charlie reverts to his previous intelligence level and a new hire tries to make fun of him.
An excellent story, and the best piece in the volume.
∗∗∗∗∗ (Excellent). 12,500 words.

•

A Death in the House (Galaxy, October 1959) by Clifford D. Simak starts with a farmer called Old Mose looking for his cows but discovering an injured alien:

It was a horrid-looking thing, green and shiny, with some purple spots on it, and it was repulsive even twenty feet away. And it stank.
It had crawled, or tried to crawl, into a clump of hazel brush, but hadn’t made it. The head part was in the brush and the rest lay out there naked in the open. Every now and then the parts that seemed to be arms and hands clawed feebly at the ground, trying to force itself deeper in the brush, but it was too weak; it never moved an inch.
It was groaning, too, but not too loud—just the kind of keening sound a lonesome wind might make around a wide, deep eave. But there was more in it than just the sound of winter wind; there was a frightened, desperate note that made the hair stand up on Old Mose’s nape.
Old Mose stood there for quite a spell, making up his mind what he ought to do about it, and a while longer after that working up his courage, although most folks offhand would have said that he had plenty. But this was the sort of situation that took more than just ordinary screwed-up courage. It took a lot of foolhardiness.
But this was a wild, hurt thing and he couldn’t leave it there, so he walked up to it and knelt down, and it was pretty hard to look at, though there was a sort of fascination in its repulsiveness that was hard to figure out—as if it were so horrible that it dragged one to it. And it stank in a way that no one had ever smelled before.  p. 134-135

Eventually Mose manages to free the creature and takes it back to his farm (and his less than salubrious surroundings—we learn later that he is a widower, and has also lost his dog to old age). After putting the creature in front of the fire he phones the local doctor, who attends, but cannot do anything for the creature. Mose pays him with a silver dollar (this will be significant later) and meantime goes out into the woods to recover the alien’s damaged ship, a bird cage-like machine.
When Mose wakes up the next day the alien has died—and the story becomes an different piece entirely, one which begins with him attempting to get a plot in the town cemetery so he can give the creature a decent burial. He is unsuccessful, and then also fails to get the parson to come out to the farm to perform a service when he decides to bury the alien on his land. When Mose prepares the body for burial he finds a cloudy glass sphere in a pocket-sized slit in the alien’s body, which he subsequently replaces.
Various visitors turn up at the farm in the days that follow: the local sheriff, a professor from the nearby university, and a flying saucer nut—but Mose has already ploughed over the grave to hide it, and bluntly tells them he will not reveal the location.
The final leg of the story (spoiler) sees an odd plant start to grow on the site of the burial plot and eventually form a recognisable shape. One morning Mose wakes up to see the clone or descendant of the alien at his door. As Mose’s loneliness has been established throughout the tale, he is delighted to see the creature—but then it sees the bird cage machine in the barn and indicates to Mose that it wants it repaired. Mose is conflicted by this as he realises that he will not only lose the alien’s company but will also have to sacrifice all the silver dollars he has hidden away—his entire savings—to make an internal part to repair the machine.
After the ship is repaired, and just before the alien gets in its machine and vanishes, it gives Mose the small glass sphere that he previously found on the body—but this time it is clear and not cloudy. It makes Mose feel happier, and gives him a sense of companionship.
The final paragraph of the story then switches to the alien’s point of view and, as well as bootstrapping the quality of this piece up another notch, partly reframes what has come before:

It was dark and lonely and unending in the depths of space with no Companion. It might be long before another was obtainable.
It perhaps was a foolish thing to do, but the old creature had been such a kind savage, so fumbling and so pitiful and eager to help. And one who travels far and fast must likewise travel light. There had been nothing else to give.  p. 154

This story, with its principled, compassionate and very human main character, is a lovely piece, and a surprisingly affecting one too. Certainly one for a ‘Best of Clifford Simak’ volume, and a no-brainer for a ‘Best of the Year’ anthology as well.
∗∗∗∗ (Very good). 8,050 words

•

Mariana by Fritz Leiber (Fantastic, February 1960) opens with Mariana discovering a secret panel of switches in her house, one of which has a lit sign labelled “Trees” underneath. When her husband Jonathan comes home from work she asks him about the switches:

“Didn’t you know they were radio trees? I didn’t want to wait twenty-five years for them and they couldn’t grow in this rock anyway. A station in the city broadcasts a master pine tree and sets like ours pick it up and project it around homes. It’s vulgar but convenient.”
After a bit she asked timidly, “Jonathan, are the radio pine trees ghostly as you drive through them?”
“Of course not! They’re solid as this house and the rock under it—to the eye and to the touch too. A person could even climb them. If you ever stirred outside you’d know these things. The city station transmits pulses of alternating matter at sixty cycles a second. The science of it is over your head.”  p. 156

While Jonathan is away at work the next day (spoiler) she switches off the trees, much to his annoyance when he comes home—and then exacerbates matters the next day when she switches off the “House”. Next to go is “Jonathan” when he angrily confronts her; then she switches off the “Stars” in the sky above.
After sitting in the dark for several hours (no sun rises as there are no stars) she notices the fifth switch is off and labelled “Doctor”. She switches this one on and shortly finds herself in a hospital room. A mechanical voice asks her whether she wants to accept treatment for her depression or continue with the wish-fulfilment therapy. Mariana responds by turning off the “Doctor” switch on a pedestal beside her and, when she is back in her virtual reality, she turns off the switch labelled “Mariana”.
This last action doesn’t really make any sense—why would therapy program let her suicide?—but the surreal, dream-like logic of the story may work for some readers.
∗∗ (Average). 1,900 words.

•

An Inquiry Concerning the Curvature of the Earth’s Surface and Divers Investigations of a Metaphysical Nature by Roger Price (Monocle Magazine, 1958)⁴ is an undeveloped squib about a growing Flat Earth movement in what would seem to be an alternate world:

This Movement may turn out to be idealistic and premature but nevertheless I believe it should have “its day in court.” We must remember that people once laughed at men whose names are now household words as familiar to us as our own; men such as Oliver and Wilmer Write, Eli Fulton and Thomas Steamboat. The Flat Earthers are quite progressive in all of their ideas and they plan to get national publicity for their Movement next New Year’s Day by pushing a number of people off the edge. Their only difficulty so far has been in obtaining volunteers.  p. 162

Not worth the two pages it is printed on.
– (Poor). 500 words.

•

Day at the Beach by Carol Emshwiller (F&SF, August 1959) begins with two (hairless) parents discussing, over their oatmeal, the dangers in commuting to the city to get food. Thereafter we get other hints that this is a post-holocaust or post-Collapse future when a discussion about a possible trip to the beach has mention of the boardwalk having been used for firewood and, when the couple’s three-year old comes in from outside, he is described as having down growing along his backbone (the woman wonders “if that was the way the three year olds had been before”). The child also bites a small chunk out of his mother’s shoulder when she chastises him for knocking over his oatmeal.
After this setup the couple decide—partly because they think it’s Saturday, partly because it’s a nice day—to go to the beach: they fill the car with only enough petrol to get there, and take a can’s worth for the return trip (which they plan to hide while they are on the beach). They also take weapons: a wrench for her, and a hammer for him.
On the drive there they see only a solitary cyclist and then, when they get to the beach, no-one at all. Later on, however, three men appear and threaten them, saying they want the couple’s gasoline. There is then an altercation during which the husband kills the leader with his hammer and the other two run off. Then the couple realise that the child has disappeared.
The remainder of the story sees the couple searching for the kid, and the husband eventually bringing him back. At this point the wife notes that they have time for one last swim (this with the attacker’s body still lying nearby). Then, on the way home:

He fell asleep in her lap on the way home, lying forward against her with his head at her neck the way she liked. The sunset was deep, with reds and purples.
She leaned against Ben. “The beach always makes you tired,” she said. “I remember that from before too. I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”
They drove silently along the wide empty parkway. The car had no lights, but that didn’t matter.
“We did have a good day after all,” she said. “I feel renewed.”
“Good,” he said.
[. . .]
“We had a good day,” she said again. “And Littleboy saw the sea.” She put her hand on the sleeping boy’s hair, gently so as not to disturb him and then she yawned. “I wonder if it really was Saturday.”  p. 174

This is an effectively dystopian piece, but its impact will probably be blunted for most readers by the many similar tales that have appeared since. I suspect, however, this story was notably grim for the time, and it foreshadows later new wave stories.
∗∗∗ (Good). 4,100 words.

•

What the Left Hand Was Doing by Randall Garrett (Astounding, February 1960) begins with the protagonist, Spencer Candron, arriving at The Society for Mystical and Metaphysical Research, Inc., a front for a group of psi (mind-power) capable individuals. Once we eventually get beyond the over-padded beginning (which includes a description of the building, of Candron, and of the secretary and her role in keeping away the crazies) he finally receives a leisurely briefing about the Red Chinese abduction of a famous US physicist called Ch’ien at an international conference in their country (his abductors have attempted to cover this up by murdering a double). Candron is told to rescue Ch’ien before the Chinese uncover his interstellar drive secrets.
The story picks up pace when Candron flies over Chinese territory and arranges to have an aircraft door to fall off during the flight. He then jumps out:

Without a parachute, he had flung himself from the plane toward the earth below, and his only thought was his loathing, his repugnance, for that too, too solid ground beneath.
He didn’t hate it. That would be deadly, for hate implies as much attraction as love—the attraction of destruction. Fear, too, was out of the question; there must be no such relationship as that between the threatened and the threatener. Only loathing could save him. The earth beneath was utterly repulsive to him.
And he slowed.
His mind would not accept contact with the ground, and his body was forced to follow suit. He slowed.
Minutes later, he was drifting fifty feet above the surface, his altitude held steady by the emotional force of his mind. Not until then did he release the big suitcase he had been holding. He heard it thump as it hit, breaking open and scattering clothing around it.
In the distance, he could hear the faint moan of a siren. The Chinese radar had picked up two falling objects. And they would find two: one door and one suitcase, both of which could be accounted for by the “accident.” They would know that no parachute had opened; hence, if they found no body, they would be certain that no human being could have dropped from the plane.  p. 183

Not bad, and the next part of the story—where he establishes himself in a hotel room in the city—is interesting too. However, the piece falters when Candron later goes to the Security HQ in the middle of the city and makes full use of his psi powers: he holds onto the underside of a car with his fingertips as it goes through the checkpoint; levitates up an elevator shaft; impersonates a Chinese general in a phone call to the cell guards to organise his visit; and then goes down to see Ch’ien. This is all too easily done, as is his rescue of the physicist, which (spoiler) sees him knock the scientist unconscious with an uppercut, set off a smoke bomb, and then teleport them both back to his room in the city. There, he carries Ch’ien to the roof of the hotel, and levitates himself and the physicist out to sea where they eventually meet a submarine (this latter event happens when he’s getting a bit tired, something we find out after a two page lecture about the limits of the human mind and psionic abilities).
The last couple of pages of the story have a Senator and a couple of other men debrief Candron at the institute, and one of the questions they ask him is why he kept knocking the physicist unconscious throughout the flight to the sub. Candron replies with some typical Campbellian blather about psionics:

“It would ruin him,” Candron broke in, before the senator could speak. “If he saw, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that levitation and teleportation were possible, he would have accepted his own senses as usable data on definite phenomena. But, limited as he is by his scientific outlook, he would have tried to evolve a scientific theory to explain what he saw. What else could a scientist do?”
Senator Kerotski nodded, and his nod said, “I see. He would have diverted his attention from the field of the interstellar drive to the field of psionics. And he would have wasted years trying to explain an inherently nonlogical area of knowledge by logical means.”
“That’s right,” Candron said. “We would have set him off on a wild goose chase, trying to solve the problems of psionics by the scientific, the logical method. We would have presented him with an unsolvable problem.”
Taggert patted his knees. “We would have given him a problem that he could not solve with the methodology at hand. It would be as though we had proved to an ancient Greek philosopher that the cube could be doubled, and then allowed him to waste his life trying to do it with a straightedge and compass.”
“We know Ch’ien’s psychological pattern,” Candron continued. “He’s not capable of admitting that there is any other thought pattern than the logical. He would try to solve the problems of psionics by logical methods, and would waste the rest of his life trying to do the impossible.”  pp. 202-203

I think this sort of thing is what was meant by “pushing Campbell’s buttons” (i.e. pandering to the editor of Astounding magazine, John W. Campbell, and his sometimes whacky ideas).
I eventually lost patience with this story as I’m not a fan of work that (a) uses lazy SF ideas and terminology (“psi”) or (b) is obviously padded with word-rate generating material (e.g. endless description and lectures). But most of all I don’t like (c) stories (and movies—I’m looking at you Wonder Woman) where the superhero protagonists can seemingly do anything they want and are never in any sort of jeopardy.
If none of this applies to you, this may be an entertaining enough piece as it’s readable enough.
∗ (Mediocre). 10,900 words.

•

The Sound Sweep by J. G. Ballard (Science Fantasy #39, February 1960) opens with Madame Gioconda, an ageing and out of work opera diva, suffering a headache which is worsened by the sounds of flyover traffic and then, later, by the phantom applause that comes from the auditorium around her apartment on the sound stage of a disused radio station—applause that later turns into boos and catcalls. At midnight a man called Magnon, a mute who can “hear” sound residues, arrives with his “sonovac”:

Understanding her, he first concentrated on sweeping the walls and ceiling clean, draining away the heavy depressing underlayer of traffic noises. Carefully he ran the long snout of the sonovac over the ancient scenic flats (relics of her previous roles at the Metropolitan Opera House) which screened-in Madame Gioconda’s makeshift home—the great collapsing Byzantine bed (Othello) mounted against the microphone turret; the huge framed mirrors with their peeling silverscreen (Orpheus) stacked in one corner by the bandstand; the stove (Trovatore) set up on the program director’s podium; the gilt-trimmed dressing table and wardrobe (Figaro) stuffed with newspaper and magazine cuttings. He swept them methodically, moving the sonovac’s nozzle in long strokes, drawing out the dead residues of sound that had accumulated during the day.
By the time he finished the air was clear again, the atmosphere lightened, its overtones of fatigue and irritation dissipated. Gradually Madame Gioconda recovered. Sitting up weakly, she smiled wanly at Mangon. Mangon grinned back encouragingly, slipped the kettle onto the stove for Russian tea, sweetened by the usual phenobarbitone chaser, switched off the sonovac and indicated to her that he was going outside to empty it.  p. 205

When Magnon empties the sonovac there is only the usual sound detritus, and it becomes obvious that the audience that Madame Gioconda claims to hear is only imaginary. But Magnon is an admirer of the singer and hopes to win her favour—he visits every day to clean the apartment of sound residues, serve her tea, and listen to her tales of a comeback and revenge—so he keeps this information to himself.
In the next part of the story we learn more about her obsolescence (normal music was replaced by ultrasonic music which can’t be heard by humans but has an emotional effect) and her plans to stage a comeback by blackmailing a wealthy producer called LeGrande who is going into politics (she drunkenly relates she has intimate photographs of them together as well as a “no holes barred” memoir).
The rest of the story follows quite an involved plot, which adds another character, Ray Alto, a client and friend of Magnon’s who is an ultrasonic composer, and Madame Gioconda’s discovery of the fact that Magnon can not only hear sound residue but can distinguish snatches of conversation. This latter ability eventually sees Magnon and Madame Gioconda go the “sound stockades”—a dumping ground for all the city’s sonic waste—and sieve through the detritus for fragments of conversation which will let them blackmail Le Grande. During this search Magnon recovers his powers of speech.
All of this eventually rolls towards a climax where (spoiler) Madame LeGrande is scheduled—after her blackmail attempt is successful—to sing alongside a debut performance of Alto’s ultrasonic Opus Zero, much to the composer’s fury. Alto then plots with Magnon (who has subsequently been brutally snubbed by Gioconda after she got what she wanted) to hide a sonovac at the performance to hoover up her voice before it gets to the mike (a voice which sounds like, according to Alto, a “cat being strangled” because “what time alone hasn’t done to her, cocaine and self-pity have.”) But, of course, during the performance Magnon (who has by now lost his voice again) decides to revenge himself by letting the world hear her:

Mangon listened to her numbly, hands gripping the barrell of the sonovac. The voice exploded in his brain, flooding every nexus of cells with its violence. It was grotesque, an insane parody of a classical soprano. Harmony, purity, cadence had gone. Rough and cracked, it jerked sharply from one high note to a lower, its breath intervals uncontrolled, sudden precipices of gasping silence which plunged through the volcanic torrent, dividing it into a loosely connected sequence of bravura passages.
He barely recognized what she was singing: the Toreador song from Carmen. Why she had picked this he could not imagine. Unable to reach its higher notes she fell back on the swinging rhythm of the refrain, hammering out the rolling phrases with tosses of her head. After a dozen bars her pace slackened, she slipped into an extempore humming, then broke out of this into a final climactic assault. Appalled, Mangon watched as two or three members of the orchestra stood up and disappeared into the wings. The others had stopped playing, were switching off their instruments and conferring with each other. The audience was obviously restive; Mangon could hear individual voices in the intervals when Madame Gioconda refilled her lungs.
[. . .]
Satisfied, he dropped the sonovac to the floor, listened for a moment to the caterwauling above, which was now being drowned by the mounting vocal opposition of the audience, then unlatched the door.  pp. 242-243

This is an original piece and a pretty good one too. I note, however, that it feels like early Ballard: not only does the sonovac and ultrasonic music subject matter feel more like something you would find in Barrington Bayley’s later work, but the story also has a conventional plot. That said, it does have Ballard’s distinctive style.
If the final scene had been clearer, and the miraculous speech recovery in the middle of the story less awkwardly placed, I would have probably rated this higher. That said, these are minor criticisms, and it is well worth a read.
I note in passing that there are a significant number of drug references for the time.
∗∗∗+ (Good to very good). 14,500 words. Story link.

•

Plenitude by Will Mohler (F&SF, November 1959, as by Will Worthington) starts with a four-year-old boy called Mike asking his narrator father various questions while they garden. As a result of these—why don’t they live in the “Old House in the Valley” anymore, are the “funny men” broken (explained by the narrator as a reference to derelict robots in the city), etc.—the story soon establishes itself as a post-collapse one.⁵
Then, when the narrator and son Mike return to their house for supper, he learns from his wife that his other son, a twelve-year-old called Chris, has gone hunting. It later becomes apparent that there has been a falling out between the two (and possibly an estrangement with a neighbouring family) as a result of a trip to the city where the narrator killed someone.
The rest of the story then flashbacks to a previous day of gardening, but this time with the elder son Chris, who is also questioning the father about why they live as they do and how society ended up in its present state. The narrator tries to answer these more involved and challenging questions but eventually becomes exasperated with his son and says he will take him into the city so he can see things for himself.
The climactic section (spoiler) sees the pair moving through a mostly derelict urban landscape until they come to a fence surrounding a group of large fluid-filled bubbles. Inside these people float seemingly unaware, connected up to various leads and hoses. The narrator cuts the perimeter fence and the pair go inside for a closer look:

I do not know the purpose of all the tubes and wires myself. I do know that some are connected with veins in their arms and legs, others are nutrient enemata and for collection of body wastes, still others are only mechanical tentacles which support and endlessly fondle and caress. I know that the wires leading to the metal caps on their heads are part of an invention more voracious and terrible than the ancient television—direct stimulation of certain areas of the brain, a constant running up and down the diapason of pleasurable sensation, controlled by a sort of electronic kaleidoscope.
My imagination stops about here. It would be the ultimate artificiality, with nothing of reality about it save endless variation. Of senselessness I will not think. I do not know if they see constantly shifting masses or motes of color, or smell exotic perfumes, or hear unending and constantly swelling music. I think not. I doubt that they even experience anything so immediate and yet so amorphous as the surge and recession of orgasm or the gratification of thirst being quenched. It would be stimulation without real stimulus; ultimate removal from reality. I decide not to speak of this to Chris. He has had enough. He has seen the wires and the tubes.  pp. 253-254

Then one of the occupants opens his eyes and sees the pair, and a guard robot quickly arrives. The narrator destroys it and then, in his rage, goes on to slash open the bubbles:

The corn-knife was not very sharp, but the skin of the sphere parted with disgusting ease. I heard Chris scream, “No! Dad! No!” . . . but I kept hacking. We were nearly engulfed in the pinkish, albuminous nutritive which gushed from the ruptured sac. I can still smell it.
The creatures inside were more terrible to see in the open air than they had been behind their protective layers of plastic material. They were dead white and they looked to be soft, although they must have had normal human skeletons. Their struggles were blind, pointless and feeble, like those of some kind of larvae found under dead wood, and the largest made a barely audible mewing sound as it groped about in search of what I cannot imagine.
I heard Chris retching violently, but could not tear my attention away from the spectacle. The sphere now looked like some huge coelenterate which had been halved for study in the laboratory, and the hoselike tentacles still moved like groping cilia.
The agony of the creatures in the “grape” (I cannot think of them as People) when they were first exposed to unfiltered, unprocessed air and sunlight, when the wires and tubes were torn from them, and especially when the metal caps on their heads fell off in their panicky struggles and the whole universe of chilly external reality rushed in upon them at once, is beyond my imagining; and perhaps this is merciful. This, and the fact that they lay in the stillness of death after only a very few minutes in the open air.
Memory is merciful too in its imperfection. All I remember of our homeward journey is the silence of it.  pp. 255-256

The remainder of the story returns to the present day, and sees a returned Mike and a neighouring family joining the narrator, wife and youngest son for supper. Mike appears reconciled, even unconcerned, about what happened.
This isn’t a perfect piece by any means (the conflict set up between the father and son fades away rather than being resolved in any meaningful or cathartic way) but it has some superior qualities. Not only is the story well written, with some good characterisation and vivid description, but the narrator’s reflective commentary also puts the reader right inside his head. This rich mixture transcends the slightness of the plot.
I’ll be tracking down more of Mohler’s work.
∗∗∗+ (Good to Very Good). 5,100 words.

•

The Man Who Lost the Sea by Theodore Sturgeon (F&SF, October 1959) opens with a boy annoying a man who is half-buried in sand with explanations about how his helicopter works:

He doesn’t want to think about flying, about helicopters, or about you, and he most especially does not want explanations about anything by anybody. Not now. Now, he wants to think about the sea. So you go away.
The sick man is buried in the cold sand with only his head and his left arm showing. He is dressed in a pressure suit and looks like a man from Mars. Built into his left sleeve is a combination time-piece and pressure gauge, the gauge with a luminous blue indicator which makes no sense, the clock hands luminous red. He can hear the pounding of surf and the soft swift pulse of his pumps. One time long ago when he was swimming he went too deep and stayed down too long and came up too fast, and when he came to it was like this: they said, “Don’t move, boy. You’ve got the bends. Don’t even try to move.” He had tried anyway. It hurt. So now, this time, he lies in the sand without moving, without trying.  p. 259

After this we learn that the man isn’t, for an unspecified reason, able to think straight, and his inchoate thoughts wander from a childhood concussion in a gym class to observations of his local environment—these include what he thinks is the sea in front of him—before moving on to an attempt to calculate the period of an overhead satellite. During these various thought processes (spoiler) it seems he may be somewhere other than Earth.
The next long section is a formative episode from the man’s youth, when he got into difficulties in the sea while snorkelling and almost drowned—all because he panicked but was reluctant to call for help. He then thinks about the kid with the helicopter, which makes him recall another model, one of a spacecraft that had several stages. Then he notices that the satellite is just about to disappear, and his final calculation of its period confirms where he is.
In the last section of the story he recalls the spacecraft again, but the real thing this time and not the model, and how the final two stages, Gamma and Delta, crashed onto the surface, ejecting a man to lie among radioactive graphite from the destroyed engine. Then the sun rises, and he realises that there isn’t a sea in front of him:

The sun is high now, high enough to show the sea is not a sea, but brown plain with the frost burned off it, as now it burns away from the hills, diffusing in air and blurring the edges of the sun’s disk, so that in a very few minutes there is no sun at all, but only a glare in the east. Then the valley below loses its shadows, and like an arrangement in a diorama, reveals the form and nature of the wreckage below: no tent-city this, no installation, but the true real ruin of Gamma and the eviscerated hulk of Delta. (Alpha was the muscle, Beta the brain; Gamma was a bird, but Delta, Delta was the way home.)  p. 269

He realises that this is his spaceship, and it crashed on Mars. He also realises that he is dying but, in his last moments, he rejoices that “we made it.”
This story may appear to have a slight narrative arc but a plot synopsis isn’t much use in an appreciation: what we really have here are a number of well-written and intensely evocative memories and scenes that are slowly brought into focus to reveal what has happened to the man. It’s an accomplished piece and, in terms of technique, atypical for the period.
∗∗∗+ (Good to Very Good). 4,950 words.

•

Make a Prison by Lawrence Block (Science Fiction Stories, January 1959) gets off to a pretty good start with two Alteans discussing a prisoner—the murderer of three of their kind, the first such crime in thirty generations—who is about to be imprisoned in a tall tower. They talk about the security precautions (the curved, unclimbable walls, the pneumatic delivery tubes, etc.) and then watch as the shackled prisoner is sent up to the accommodation at the top.
Several minutes later the prisoner throws his shackles down (the key was at the top of the tower), and then (spoiler) he climbs the rail and flies away.
This latter event broke the story for me as there is no build up to this surprising event—it just happens. I presume the twist might work for those who were assuming that the prisoner is a human.
∗ (Mediocre). 1,000 words. Story link.

 

What Now, Little Man? by Mark Clifton (F&SF, December 1959) is set on the frontier planet of Libo, and opens with a conversation between Jim MacPherson, the narrator, and a friend called Paul Tyler about an indigenous lifeform called the Goonie (after Albatrosses on Earth, who similarly do not flee when predated by man). During this data dump, we learn that the goonies are kept to supply meat for the colony, domesticated to do simple tasks, and are physically beautiful:

[I] marveled, oh, for maybe the thousandth time, at the impossibility of communicating the goonie to anyone who hadn’t seen them. The ancient Greek sculptors didn’t mind combining human and animal form, and somebody once said the goonie began where those sculptors left off. No human muscle cultist ever managed quite the perfect symmetry natural to the goonie—grace without calculation, beauty without artifice. Their pelts varied in color from the silver blond of this pair to a coal black, and their huge eyes from the palest topaz to an emerald green, and from emerald green to deep-hued amethyst. The tightly curled mane spread down the nape and flared out over the shoulders like a cape to blend with the short, fine pelt covering the body. Their faces were like Greek sculpture, too, yet not human. No, not human. Not even humanoid, because—well, because, that was a comparison never made on Libo. That comparison was one thing we couldn’t tolerate. Definitely, then, neither human nor humanoid.  pp. 276-277

There is more data-dumping in the next section, where we learn that MacPherson started his career by planting a plantation of pal trees to attract the goonies and, while he names his domesticated “pet” animals—some of whom MacPherson has recently taught to read and write—the others are treated as livestock. We also get an angst-laden account about space travel making humans sterile and therefore unable to reproduce on Libo. This setup is further complicated with the arrival of a woman called Miriam Wellman from the Mass Psychology unit, who starts holding meetings where she induces therapeutic “frenzies” among the rapidly increasing male population.
The story eventually gets going when Tyler hires a goonie from MacPherson to do his reports for Hest, a recently arrived and troublesome official—who is later ridiculed by Tyler when he reveals that a goonie wrote them. Tyler also adds that that the alien is better at the job than Hest and, by saying this, he breaks a local taboo in comparing humans adversely to the goonies. He is subsequently cold-shouldered by the town folks.
After this exchange, MacPherson talks to Tyler in an effort to supress his revelation, but a businessman subsequently arrives at MacPherson’s farm wanting to buy one of the goonies who can read and write; MacPherson refuses, but the business man later tricks McPherson’s wife into giving him one for cash.
After MacPherson discovers what has happened he goes looking for his goonie, but ends up in Wellman’s cottage:

“My work here is about finished,” she said, as she came over to her chair and sat down again. “It will do no harm to tell you why. You’re not a Company man, and your reputation is one of discretion. . . . The point is, in mass hiring for jobs in such places as Libo, we make mistakes in Personnel. Our tests are not perfect.”
“We?” I asked.
“I’m a trouble-shooter for Company Personnel,” she said.
“All this mumbo-jumbo,” I said. “Getting out there and whipping these boys up into frenzies . . .”
“You know about medical inoculation, vaccination,” she said. “Under proper controls, it can be psychologically applied. A little virus, a little fever, and from there on, most people are immune. Some aren’t. With some, it goes into a full-stage disease. We don’t know which is which without test. We have to test. Those who can’t pass the test, Mr. MacPherson, are shipped back to Earth. This way we find out quickly, instead of letting some Typhoid Marys gradually infect a whole colony.”
“Hest,” I said.
“Hest is valuable,” she said. “He thinks he is transferred often because we need him to set up procedures and routines. Actually it’s because he is a natural focal point for the wrong ones to gather round. Birds of a feather. Sending him out a couple months in advance of a trouble-shooter saves us a lot of time. We already know where to look when we get there.”
“He doesn’t catch on?” I asked.
“People get blinded by their own self-importance,” she said. “He can’t see beyond himself. And,” she added, “we vary our techniques.  p. 299

The story finally climaxes on Carson’s Hill, where a lynch mob intends to kill the goonie. MacPherson climbs the hill intending to save the creature but soon sees he is outnumbered. As he considers what to do, Wellman arrives and treats the group of men like errant children. The crowd begins to dissipate:

“Oh, no, you don’t, Peter Blackburn!” Miss Wellman snapped at him, as if he were four years old. “You come right back here and untie this poor goonie. Shame on you. You, too, Carl Hest. The very idea!”
One by one she called them by name, whipped them with phrases used on small children—but never on grown men.
She was a professional, she knew what she was doing. And she had been right in what she had told me—if I’d butted in, there might have been incalculable damage done.
Force would not have stopped them. It would have egged them on, increased the passion. They would have gloried in resisting it. It would have given meaning to a meaningless thing. The resistance would have been a part, a needed part, and given them the triumph of rape instead of the frustration of encountering motionless, indifferent acceptance.
But she had shocked them out of it, by not recognizing their grown maleness, their lustful dangerousness. She saw them as no more than naughty children—and they became that, in their own eyes.  pp. 305-306

There is a philosophical postscript where MacPherson thinks about the goonies’ intelligence and, after reflecting on their behaviour when hunted, concludes “What is the point of survival if there is no purpose beyond survival.”
In conclusion, I found this an exceptionally clunky story full of unconvincing ideas and scenes (see the passage above) that don’t really fit together. Apart from the sketchy ecosystem (the goonies and the pal trees seem to be all there is on the planet), the idea that humans would treat an intelligent alien animal as a meat source is hard to get your head around nowadays, and I’m not entirely sure it would have that convincing in the late 1950s. Setting that aside, the seemingly endless amount of supposed psychology and cod philosophy stuffed into the story would, in any event, make for a dull piece. (I’d add that it seems like another thinly disguised Analog lecture dressed up as a story—imagine my surprise when I found it was first printed in F&SF! Is this a Campbell reject?)
After writing this review, it feels like this story should probably be rated as “mediocre,” but I see my notes say “average.” Only just, I suspect.
∗∗ (Average). 13,650 words. Story link.

•••

The non-fiction in the book isn’t any better than the fiction. Judith Merril’s Introduction is a lofty squib that discusses how the wonder of primitive man was slowly replaced by the rationality of science—but is now loose again on Earth in the form of SF. Or something like that.
The Story Introductions are initially fairly standard fare but it isn’t long before Merril begins to use them to wage an intermittent guerrilla war against Kingsley Amis (and presumably his comments in the recently released New Maps of Hell):

In a recent volume of considerable arrogance, ill-considered opinion, and unconsidering slovenliness of research, a British humorist with pretensions to critical judgment of science fantasy, one Kingsley Amis, refers to the (unnamed) writer of a story entitled “Of Missing Persons” as “an author who has yet to make his name.”
“‘Of Missing Persons,’” says Mr. Amis, “is one of those things that offer themselves for analysis with an almost suspicious readiness.” I was not able to determine, in the three pages of quotes and comments that followed, just what analysis was being made, or whose readiness for what was under suspicion—but I may have been prejudiced by having read the story, several times, with great enjoyment, when it was included in the first annual volume of SF.
For the benefit of any readers who, like Mr. Amis, are unfamiliar with the author’s work—the name is Finney. Jack Finney. And it has been a familiar one in science-fantasy since Robert Heinlein’s 1951 anthology, “Tomorrow the Stars,” first offered it to the specialty field.  p. 14

There is more of this in some of the other story introductions (in the Davidson she agrees with Amis about “science fiction” no longer being a suitable term to describe the field; in the Bradbury she snipes “even Mr. Amis knows his name”). Then Merril suffers another containment failure in the introduction to the Campbell essay:

The Incredible Mr. Amis singles out John Campbell several times for special notice. This is not unusual; almost anyone writing about modern American science fiction finds himself paying respects to the man under whose sometimes daft but always deft—and vigorous and enthusiastic—guidance, ASF (which you can take as Astounding Science Fiction or the new title. Analog Science Fact and—gasp—Fiction) has been the consistent leader in the field—both as to sales and influence. Mr. A., however, limits his comments about Campbell’s influence to a snidish remark about cranks whose rapid departure would benefit the whole field and a description of the editor as “a deviant figure of marked ferocity.”
I am here to say that I have talked with Campbell, literally and actually—and lived to go back for more. (I don’t want to give the impression that talking with John is easy. But listening is lots of fun too, you know.) But we had lunch together, and both ate spaghetti, and there were no fangs, claws, or horns in evidence.  p. 123

This subject finally resurfaces in Merril’s The Year’s S-F, A Summary (where it should all have been in the first place) where she concludes by saying that she doesn’t take exception to everything Amis says, and that his unlikely comments about circulation numbers in the SF field made her buckle down and do some proper research:

Last year I reported here that the number of magazine titles in the combined fantasy and s-f fields had dropped from twenty-one to ten. As of the start of 1960, we are down two more, to eight titles—less than at any time since before the big boom of the early fifties—since 1946, to be exact.
But—
Of these eight titles, six are monthlies, and two bimonthly. In 1945-46, with eight titles, there was an average of four magazines a month issued; now there are seven. In 1949, when there were also seven magazines a month on the stands, they comprised 17 titles. In the peak year for s-f magazine publishing, 1953, there were four times as many titles as now—but only twice as many magazines.
It would be easy—and gratifying—to adduce from this that the publications surviving today are the solid, sound, worthy ones: to some degree it must even be true. But to generalize from that to the notion that “science fiction is maturing” (which I keep hearing, hopefully) would be inaccurate. The reason for all these healthy-looking regular monthly magazines has virtually nothing to do with either publishers or buyers; it is the work of the distributors, who last year began putting pressure on the publishers to go monthly or quit. Two who tried to make twelve books a year pay off, failed; two others “suspended” indefinitely without trying.  p. 313-314

She then adds:

For the past five years the number of paperback books in the combined fantasy and science-fiction fields has held to a remarkably steady all-time high of 70 to 80 per year. From the looks of things, it will rise sharply this year. In short, we may expect more individual paperback books than issues of magazines this year—but the fact is that for the past two or three years, p-bs have been outselling magazines in total quantity. 60,000 copies is an exceptionally good circulation for an s-f magazine these days, I understand; but very few book publishers will issue a p-b without being able to sell at least that many. The average paperback sale is probably somewhere between 90 and 100 thousand.
In the first volume of S-F, reporting on 1955, I pointed out with some pride that as many as 50 or 60 s-f stories had appeared in “slick,” quality, and other non-s-f magazines. Last year more than that number was accounted for in the “Playboy-type” magazines alone. With what appeared in the slick and quality magazines, there were, I should estimate, upward of 200 stories (fantasy and s-f) published in non-s-f periodicals in 1959—equal to the contents of at least three more full digest-size magazines, but with circulations (in many cases) in the hundreds, instead of tens, of thousands.  p. 314

There is also commentary about the various places that SF is appearing in the mainstream, and a short list of recommended novels, etc.:

For novels in the magazines: to Gordon Dickson’s explosive “Dorsai!” (Ast, May-July), Everett E. Cole’s “The
Best Made Plans,” (Ast, Nov.-Dee.); and the magazine version of Pat Frank’s “Alas, Babylon” (Good Housekeeping, March).
For novels in book form: to Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan (Dell); John Brunner’s Echo In the Skull (Ace); and Theodore Sturgeon’s Cosmic Rape (Dell).  p. 316

There are a couple of non-fiction essays in the middle of the book. The first of those is “What Do You Mean … Human? by John W. Campbell, Jr., one of his editorials from Astounding which starts off well enough with Asimov’s three laws segueing into a discussion of what makes a human a human. However, Campbell eventually does what he normally does, which is to daisy chain a lot of contentious and/or dubious and/or barely connected statements together:

I suspect one of the most repugnant aspects of Darwin’s concept of evolution was—not that we descended from monkeys—but its implication that something was apt to descend from us! Something that wasn’t human . . . and wasn’t subhuman.
The only perfect correlation is auto-correlation; “I am exactly what I am.” Any difference whatever makes the correlation less perfect.
Then if what I feel is human—anything different is less perfectly correlated with humanness. Hence any entity not identical is more or less subhuman; there can’t possibly be something more like me than I am.

I suspect that the objection to Darwin’s work was that it suggested that we were an evolutionary accident rather than God’s work and, possibly, that the world was more than 4,700 years old (or whatever).
As to the “anything less perfectly correlated” comment, that seems to imply that everyone’s idea about what it is to be human is the same—and I’d also disagree that anything that isn’t human is “sub-human”.
But I don’t know why I’m bothering with this, it’s like fighting mist.
Sierra Sam by Ralph Dighton appears to be a short piece about a company that manufactures an early type of crash test dummies.
There are two very short poems, Hot Argument by Randall Garrett, and Me by Hilbert Schenck.
Finally, there is The Year’s S-F, A Summary (see above) and Honorable Mentions. I’m not sure how much use this latter item is, but it lists a further three pages of stories (with seventeen of those from non-genre magazines).

•••

In conclusion, this Best of the Year anthology is much more of a mixed bag than it should be, and includes far too many slight or gimmicky stories. If Merril picked the best available material—rather than going on a fishing expedition in the mainstream—this would have been a much better collection. In its defence, the short material is generally the worst, and the long material is generally the best, so there are more pages of good reading here that the contents ratings above might make you think.  ●

_____________________

1. Alfred Bester (F&SF, February 1961) thought the book was “an engaging collection,” and noted the work by Damon Knight (“biting”), Theodore Sturgeon (“dreaming and heart-warming”), Daniel Keyes (“superb”), Leiber (“deadly”), and Carol Emshwiller (“a frightening study of decadence”).
He thought the anthology as a whole “a most catholic and sophisticated collection, and a tribute to Miss Merril’s taste,” but he wished that, although writing story introductions is difficult, Merril “had not solved the problem with a gossipy and personal approach.” They were “out of place,” and “introduced a jarring note.”

John Carnell (New Worlds Science Fiction #101, December 1960) begins by saying that this volume “is even better than her previous four for 1956-1959.” He then goes on to say that the last few volumes have ranged far and wide and:

. . . by 1959 her annual selection was beginning to look like a cross-section of most of the leading journals rather than a sampling of the recognised science fiction magazines. In the 1960 edition this trend is even more noticeable and, conversely, the literary standard is even higher than before.  p. 127

He then goes on to list the magazines that the stories were taken from before noting that, for the fifth year running, Science Fantasy has a story included (J. G. Ballard’s The Sound Sweep).
Carnell concludes by saying that it would unfair to name his personal favourites but that readers should “Get it.”

S. E. Cotts (Amazing Stories, March 1961) says this volume is the “best yet,” and that “there is a tremendous range in these stories. He adds that “it seems to me that the real excitement and vitality in this volume stems more from the new names rather than the old pros,” before going on to say:

For there is nothing to compare with the thrill of reading a new author in a strange style and realizing that it is really great. By contrast, the Bradbury story makes a try at being an evocative vignette but the effort shows through, and the Sturgeon story is a little bit too ‘far out.’ The exception to this is Simak’s “A Death in the House,” a rich, warmly compassionate story of the type I praised so highly in his last book, reviewed recently.
The most impressive of the debuts (or near-debuts) are “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes [. . .], “Day at the Beach” by Carol Emshwiller, and “The Sound Sweep” by an English author, J. G. Ballard. Though the characters of these three have practically nothing in common (in the first a human guinea pig, in the second victims of a holocaust and their mutant son, in the third an opera singer and a mute), the same mood pervades each story. They have a haunting poignance, a sense of yearning and searching, not for the moon and stars, but for something had briefly, cherished, and then lost.  p. 140

He then goes on to deal with the material he didn’t like, which includes the non-fiction (Campbell’s editorial mostly) and poems (one of which he describes as “completely sick and psycho”). Cotts also has no time for Merril’s “constant sniping remarks about Kingsley Amis,” and states:

I have no more love for or patience with many of his views than Miss Merril. But by her back-biting she descends to the level of the one whom she criticizes, and what is worse, lowers the quality of the volume. For what begins as a beautifully laid out book with mature and thoughtful selections takes on the tone of a high school yearbook or the letter column of a magazine. Of course it is Miss Merril’s book and she is free to do with it as she will, but it is a shame to see a perfectly good book indulge in this kind of juvenilia. Criticism has its place, but that is not the vehicle for it.  pp. 141-142

P. Schuyler Miller (Analog, March 1961) notes that the series has been “taken over” by Simon & Schuster, “one of the world’s top publishers,” before speculating as to how the books are assembled:

There is an ugly rumor afoot that every spring the year’s best science fiction writers—a different lot each year—get together in the little town in northeastern Pennsylvania where Judith Merril, Damon Knight, James Blish and other bright lights of the field already live, and write the next year’s “Best.” The argument is that only this kind of intensive committee action could produce such a distinguished lot of yarns; the counterargument is that only distinct individuals could write them, and only a highly individual editor select them.  p. 154-155

After this bit of fluff he spends the next page or so briefly commenting on all the contributions—mostly one line descriptions with the odd adjective thrown in: “wry,” “sentimental,” “poignant,” etc. There is no clue as to which ones he liked or which ones he disliked (if any), or why, and no overarching analysis of the fiction included in the volume this year. As a review it is a waste of space.

Austin Beeman (Science Fiction Short Story Reviews) rates 5 of the stories as “great,” 12 as “good,” and 3 as “average,” and none as “poor.” I wouldn’t quibble with his choice of favourites, but he exhibits a greater tolerance of the chaff than me.

2. In The Great SF Stories 21 (1959), edited by Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (which includes this story), the editors report on two further ‘Pavro’ stories by Jack Sharkey in Gent magazine (which are not listed on ISFDB): Son of Multum in Parvo and Son of Multum in Parvo Rides Again.

3. The Wikipedia article on Feghoots.

4. Roger Price is a humourist who drew the famous Droodle books. His Wikipedia page.

5. Will Mohler’s Plentitude reminded me a little, in places, of the novel Earth Abides by George Stewart.  ●