{"id":13340,"date":"2020-10-27T13:43:11","date_gmt":"2020-10-27T13:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13340"},"modified":"2023-04-12T20:14:44","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T20:14:44","slug":"the-best-science-fiction-of-the-year-2-edited-by-terry-carr-1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13340","title":{"rendered":"The Best Science Fiction of the Year #2, edited by Terry Carr, 1973"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Summary:
\nThis is a disappointing follow-up to Carr\u2019s debut, with around half the stories not up to \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 standard: Carr seems to have a penchant for work without a decent plot or other arc that provides structure or a point.
\nThe best material comes from Joe Haldeman and Gene Wolfe (the novellas Hero<\/em> and The Fifth Head of Cerberus<\/em>), Ben Bova and William Rotsler (the novelettes Zero Gee<\/em> and Patron of the Arts<\/em>), and Robert Silverberg (the short story, When We Went to See the End of The World<\/em>).
\nThere is also good work from C. M. Kornbluth & Frederik Pohl, Naomi Mitchison, and James Tiptree Jr\u2014and a decidedly peculiar introduction by Terry Carr.
\n[ISFDB page<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Other reviews:1<\/sup>
\nCy Chauvin, Amazing, March 1975<\/a><\/em> p. 117
\nDavid G. Hartwell, Locus, #153<\/em>, 30th<\/sup> December 1973
\nP. Schuyler Miller, Analog, December 1973<\/a><\/em>, p. 165
\nUncredited, Vertex, December 1973<\/a><\/em>, p. 11<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, Terry Carr<\/p>\n

Fiction:2<\/sup>
\nThe Meeting<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by C. M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl \u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nNobody\u2019s Home<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Joanna Russ \u2217<\/strong>
\nFortune Hunter<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Poul Anderson \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Fifth Head of Cerberus<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by Gene Wolfe \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nCaliban <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Robert Silverberg \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nConversational Mode<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Grahame Leman \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nTheir Thousandth Season<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Edward Bryant \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nEurema\u2019s Dam<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by R. A. Lafferty \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nZero Gee<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Ben Bova \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nSky Blue<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Alexei Panshin and Cory Panshin \u2217<\/strong>
\nMiss Omega Raven<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Naomi Mitchison \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nPatron of the Arts<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by William Rotsler \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nGrasshopper Time<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Gordon Eklund \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nHero <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 novella by Joe Haldeman \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nWhen We Went to See the End of the World<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Robert Silverberg \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nPainwise <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 novelette by James Tiptree, Jr. \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nHonorable Mentions<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Terry Carr
\nIntroduction<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Terry Carr<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

The Meeting<\/em><\/strong> by C. M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl (F&SF<\/em>, November 1972)3<\/sup> initially seems like a mainstream story, opening as it does with Harry Vladek attending a PTA meeting at a special school his son attends for his psychological and developmental problems. Here he talks to several of the other parents about their children and the school. and then the meeting commences:<\/p>\n

Mrs. Adler was tapping her desk with a ruler. \u201cI think everybody who is coming is here,\u201d she said. She leaned against the desk and waited for the room to quiet down. She was short, dark, plump and surprisingly pretty. She did not look at all like a competent professional. She looked so unlike her role that, in fact, Harry\u2019s heart had sunk three months ago when their correspondence about admitting Tommy had been climaxed by the long trip from Elmira for the interview. He had expected a steel-gray lady with rimless glasses, a Valkyrie in a white smock like the nurse who had held wriggling, screaming Tommy while waiting for the suppository to quiet him down for his first EEG, a dishevelled old fraud, he didn\u2019t know what.
\nAnything except this pretty young woman. Another blind alley, he had thought in despair. Another, after a hundred too many already. First, \u201cWait for him to outgrow it.\u201d He doesn\u2019t. Then, \u201cWe must reconcile yourselves to God\u2019s will.\u201d But you don\u2019t want to. Then give him the prescription three times a day for three months. And it doesn\u2019t work. Then chase around for six months with the Child Guidance Clinic to find out it\u2019s only letterheads and one circuit-riding doctor who doesn\u2019t have time for anything.
\nThen, after four dreary, weepy weeks of soul-searching, the State Training School, and find out it has an eight-year waiting list. Then the private custodial school, and find they\u2019re fifty-five hundred dollars a year without medical treatment!\u2014and where do you get fifty-five hundred dollars a year? And all the time everybody warns you, as if you didn\u2019t know it: \u201cHurry! Do something! Catch it early! This is the critical stage! Delay is fatal!\u201d And then this soft-looking little woman; how could she do anything?
\nShe had rapidly shown him how. She had questioned Margaret and Harry incisively, turned to Tommy, rampaging through that same room like a rogue bull, and turned his rampage into a game. In three minutes he was happily experimenting with an indestructible old windup cabinet Victrola, and Mrs. Adler was saying to the Vladeks, \u201cDon\u2019t count on a miracle cure. There isn\u2019t any. But improvements, yes, and I think we can help Tommy.\u201d
\nPerhaps she had, thought Vladek bleakly. Perhaps she was helping as much as anyone ever could.\u00a0 p. 5<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story pivots in the final section, when Vladek returns home and his wife tells him to phone Dr Nicholson. During the subsequent conversation we learn that Nicholson\u2014mentioned earlier\u2014is not connected with the school but is (spoiler) a surgeon offering to transplant the brain from an child who has been badly injured in a car accident\u2014and who won\u2019t survive\u2014into their son. After the call the couple go upstairs to watch their son sleeping in his crib before they make their decision.
\nThe choice most readers would make here is the obvious non-eugenics one, i.e. do not proceed with the operation\u2014but they don\u2019t have to deal with the burden of a child like Tommy (as Kornbluth did4<\/sup>), and may not realise that there is a Trolley Problem here (whatever choice is made, a child dies, so opting for the status quo isn\u2019t necessarily any better than going ahead with the switch). I must admit it messed with my head for a while until I thought it through and decided on the status quo, largely based on the idea that people shouldn\u2019t have to shoulder the burden of another\u2019s bad luck (or at least not to a life-altering extent).
\nThis is a thought-provoking piece, and I suspect John W. Campbell would loved to use this one in Analog<\/em> to push his readers\u2019 buttons.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Nobody\u2019s Home<\/em><\/strong> by Joanna Russ (New Dimensions #2<\/em>, 1972) opens with the story\u2019s female protagonist Janina meeting a friend in the middle of a series of teleport booth jumps. We learn from their conversation that this future not only has teleportation, but enhanced intelligence and polygamous group marriage.
\nAfter the pair finish talking Janina continues on to her group home, where we are introduced to her family members (which include their unrealistically precocious children). Some of the family teleport in from around the world as she catches up on the family gossip, but most of the conversations are utterly vacuous:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best maker of hand-blown glass in the world,\u201d said Chi, \u201chas killed in a duel the second-best maker of handblown glass in the world.\u201d
\n\u201cFor joining the movement to ceramics,\u201d said Use, awed. Jannina felt a thrill: this was the bitter stuff under the surface of life, the fury that boiled up. A bitter struggle is foreseen in the global economy. Good old tax-issue stuff goes toddling along, year after year. She was, thought Jannina, extraordinarily grateful to be living now, to be in such an extraordinary world, to have so long to go before her death. So much to do!\u00a0 p. 24<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Presumably this is one of the aspects of this future society that is alluded to in the title\u2014that, and the fact everyone seems to be perpetually travelling.
\nWhat little complication the story has arrives in the form of a new family member called Leslie Smith, who does not have enhanced intelligence, and is socially clumsy. When she joins them for dinner that evening it does not go well.
\nAt this point I was puzzled as to the point the story was attempting to make\u2014and then it lost me completely by ending with Janina telling one of the children a creation myth. Mystifying.5<\/sup><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Fortune Hunter<\/em><\/strong> by Poul Anderson (Infinity #4<\/em>, 1972) is set in the near future, and has a media creator (\u201csensies\u201d) coming to the end of an assignment in one of the few remaining natural spaces in this future overpopulated Earth. He doesn\u2019t want to leave, so he plans to seduce one of the female rangers who comes to his temporary shelter for dinner. He hopes that, if he is successful, they will marry and he can stay on as her assistant. His plan fails.
\nThe last part of the story sees him at home in the violent and overpopulated city where he lives with his wife. When the couple watch the footage he has taken in the park they see that it isn\u2019t his best work. He explains that he was \u201ctoo involved in the reality.\u201d but privately realises that he was distracted by his plan to marry the ranger and discard his wife.
\nThis is okay, but the protagonist\u2019s plan isn\u2019t convincing, and it\u2019s essentially another gloomy early-70s eco-disaster story.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Fifth Head of Cerberus<\/em><\/strong> by Gene Wolfe (Orbit #10<\/em>, 1972) is a story that is highly regarded by some,6<\/sup> perhaps because it is an early genre example of literary fiction (I\u2019ve seen a more specific reference to Gothic fiction) fused with SF. In service of the former the story is set on the colony planet Sainte Croix (which has a sister planet, Sainte Anne), a place that feels like a slightly steampunk version of French Indochina\u2014many of the place names are French, there are references to past \u201cFrench-speaking days,\u201d there is slavery (including a trade in children), and there are robotic machines as well as human lamplighters. All very decadent. (And, although much of this suggests a connection to the Vietnam War\u2014ongoing at the time of the story\u2019s publication\u2014this doesn\u2019t appear to be the case.)
\nThere are also multiple literary (Virginia Woolf, etc.) and mythological (Cerberus, the Styx, etc.) references in the text, and a significant lack of fast genre thrills\u2014if anything, the text demands the reader\u2019s full attention for the images or passages that suggest much more that is immediately apparent.
\nThe story itself largely relates the childhood memories of the narrator (he is later identified as \u201cNumber Five\u201d by his father) who, with his brother David, lives in a bordello called La Maison du Chien (on account of the statue of Cerberus, the three-headed dog outside the property), both of whom are tutored by a cybernetic machine called Mr Millions.
\nAfter some establishing scenes with Mr Millions\u2014the lessons with him take place against the backdrop of their house and the town library, and include hints about shape-shifting aboriginals on the sister planet Sainte Anne (who may or may not have learned how to mimic humans and may or may not be extinct)\u2014the boys are individually summoned by their rather distant father late one evening for the first of a long series of interviews.
\nWhile these (mostly offstage) interviews are in progress other events take place, such as the night where Five sneaks up onto the roof of the bordello and hides from a party of patrons watching a fireworks display. There he is caught by an elderly woman who seemingly floats above the ground (we later find she uses an anti-gravity unit to help with an unspecified disability), and she takes him below to her office to question him (she descends down the centre of a circular stairway at one point). When they talk Five discovers that she is his aunt and, in among some conversation about their family, they discuss Veil\u2019s Hypothesis (this posits that the inhabitants of Sainte Croix are descendants of aboriginals from Saint Anne who mimicked humans). After seeing an old photo (perplexingly so) of his mother, he returns to his room. That night his father injects him with drugs before he is questioned, something that is the norm thereafter.
\nFollowing a number of subsequent drug-fuelled interviews Five has a temporal fugue, and awakes one day to find it is winter, and that he is in poor health (the constant use of drugs has affected him badly).
\nFive then meets a girl in the park called Phaedria, whom he befriends (we later learn she is destined for \u201cmarriage or sale\u201d). At the same time his father talks to him about his inheritance and scientific inclinations, and tells Five that he will in future answer the door of the their establishment. Then (spoiler), a visitor from Earth called Marsch arrives at the bordello, looking for a \u201cDr Veil\u201d (of Veil\u2019s Hypothesis). Five realises from Marsch\u2019s conversational comments that he, Five, may be a clone, and also that his aunt is Dr Veil! He also learns that Mr Million is a \u201cten nine unbound simulator\u201d\u2014a machine that can host a copy of a human brain (Mr Million later reveals to Five he is a copy of his great-grandfather, who died during the imaging required to make this copy of him).
\nThe next long section obliquely reiterates and confirms a lot of the information that has already been hinted at or disclosed, and starts with Phaedria, Five, and David putting on a number of plays in the local town:<\/p>\n

[That] is all I can now remember of our first performance, except that at one point some motion of mine suggested to the audience a mannerism of my father\u2019s and there was a shout of misplaced laughter\u2014and that at the beginning of the second act Sainte Anne rose, with its sluggish rivers and great, grassy meadowmeres clearly visible, flooding the audience with green light.\u00a0 p. 82<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Later, just before Five (spoiler) murders his father\/clone\u2014presumably in revenge for the treatment he has suffered\u2014much is made of the greenness of Marsch\u2019s eyes. That said, the aboriginal strand of this story proves something of a red herring, or at least it is in the novella version\u2014I believe the novel\u2019s other two parts are about\/narrated by aboriginals).
\nFive\u2019s fugues subsequently become more frequent, and at one point he awakes from a dream of being in a boat piloted by a dead man (presumably this is Charon and\/or his father, and they are on the River Styx) to find himself in the middle of a burglary that he, Phaedria and David have planned to fund their theatrical productions. After working their way down through floors of fighting dogs and slaves, the three get to a strongbox in an office, only to find it guarded by a seemingly sick but surprisingly aggressive four-armed slave. During a fight to overcome him, there is other information (and images) that suggests Five\u2019s true origins:<\/p>\n

There is one other thing to tell about that incident\u2014I mean the killing of the slave\u2014although I am tempted to go on and describe instead a discovery I made immediately afterward that had, at the time, a much greater influence on me. It is only an impression, and one that I have, I am sure, distorted and magnified in recollection.
\nWhile I was stabbing the slave, my face was very near his and I saw (I suppose because of the light from the high windows behind us) my own face reflected and doubled in the corneas of his eyes, and it seemed to me that it was a face very like his. I have been unable to forget, since then, what Dr. Marsch told me about the production of any number of identical individuals by cloning, and that my father had, when I was younger, a reputation as a child broker. I have tried since my release to find some trace of my mother, the woman in the photograph shown me by my aunt; but that picture was surely taken long before I was born\u2014perhaps even on Earth.\u00a0 p. 96<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is more of this later on:<\/p>\n

A young male, a sweeper, was brought to the [slave] block. His face as well as his back had been scarred by the whip, and his teeth were broken; but I recognized him: the scarred face was my own or my father\u2019s. I spoke to him and would have bought and freed him, but he answered me in the servile way of slaves and I turned away in disgust and went home.
\nThat night when my father had me brought to the library, for the first time in several nights. I watched our reflections in the mirror that concealed the entrance to his laboratories. He looked younger than he was; I older. We might almost have been the same man, and when he faced me and I, staring over his shoulder, saw no image of my own body, but only his arms and mine, we might have been the fighting slave.\u00a0 pp. 97-98<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eventually the story comes to the anti-climactic murder scene: Five goes to see his father\/clone with the intention of killing him but Marsch unexpectedly turns up. During the subsequent conversation there is the revelation that the family has been cloning itself for many years to improve the strain\u2019s \u201cself-knowledge.\u201d Five eventually gets rid of the green-eyed Marsch by accusing him of being an aboriginal (which, given his green eyes, he probably is).
\nThe rest of the story (the murder scene takes place off-stage) is told by the current day Five, who, it turns out, is narrating the story from prison. After nine years he is finally released and goes back to the house, which he has inherited from his aunt.
\nThis latter section, after dodging what would have been the climax in a more conventional story, makes for a pretty flat ending.
\nIn conclusion, I\u2019m not actually sure the above account gives much of an idea of what the story is really like: it is a complex piece whose many layers and subtle clues will reward careful reading. But it also seemed to me quite a nihilistic, violent, and ultimately pointless piece. For all of the heavyweight literary artillery it deploys, the story doesn\u2019t actually seem to say anything concrete about the constantly alluded to issue of identity. Still, well worth a look to experience what is one of the more complex literary SF stories.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Caliban <\/em><\/strong>by Robert Silverberg (Infinity #3<\/em>, 1972) sees a man taken from the present into a future where everyone looks the same apart from him:<\/p>\n

Let me tell you I felt out of place. I was never touchy about my looks before\u2014I mean, it\u2019s an imperfect world, we all have our flaws\u2014but these bastards didn\u2019t have flaws, and that was a hard acceptance for me to relate to. I thought I was being clever: I said, You\u2019re all multiples of the same gene-pattern, right? Modem advances in medicine have made possible an infinite reduplication of genetic information and the five of you belong to one clone, isn\u2019t that it? And several of them answered, No, this is not the case, we are in fact wholly unrelated but within the last meta-week we have independently decided to standardize our appearance according to the presently favored model. And then three or four more of them came into my room to get a look at me.
\n[. . .]
\nIn the beginning I kept telling myself: In the country of the beautiful the ugly man is king.\u00a0 p. 118<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most of the story is about the man\u2019s sexual experiences in this strange future world but, no matter how much various women desire him, he can\u2019t get over the fact that he doesn\u2019t look as perfect as the others. Eventually he convinces his doctors to change him so he looks as perfect as they are but (spoiler) he awakes from the operation to find that everyone has changed to look like him.
\nA mordantly amusing and ironic (if minor) tale about, I suppose, alienation.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Conversational Mode<\/em><\/strong> by Grahame Leman (New Writings in SF #20<\/em>, 1972) is a story in the form of keyboard terminal conversation between a Nobel prize winning scientist who has been committed to an asylum after a nervous breakdown, and a psychotherapeutic program:<\/p>\n

where am i?
\n.<\/span>
\nTO START CONVERSATION U MUST ENTER \u2018START\u2019 ON THE TERMINAL KEYBOARD AND WAIT FOR THE INSTRUCTION \u2018READY\u2019 ON THE DISPLAY AT THE FOOT OF YOUR BED \u0444
\n.<\/span>
\nStart
\n.<\/span>
\n0321\/42 READY \u0444
\n.<\/span>
\nwho are you?
\n.<\/span>
\nHARDWARE IBM 490\/80; SOFTWARE JOHN S HOPKINS PSYCHO-THERAPEUTIC PROGRAM XIXB, WRITTEN IN PSYCHLAN VII DIALECT 324 (SEE MANUAL IN YOUR BEDSIDE CUPBOARD); MIDDLEWARE MACHINE-INDEPENDENT OPERATING SYSTEM CALTECH PIDGIN XVIII (SEE MANUAL IN YOUR BEDSIDE CUPBOARD) \u0444
\n.<\/span>
\nwhat do i call you?
\n.<\/span>
\nU MAY DECLARE A NAME IN PLACE OF THE STANDARD \u2018START\u2019 ENTRY \u0444 TO DECLARE A NAME, ENTER \u2018DECLARESTARTNAME:\u2019 FOLLOWED BY A NAME OF NOT MORE THAN TEN CHARACTERS \u0444
\n.<\/span>
\ndeclarestartname: boole; query AOK?
\n.<\/span>
\nBOOLE DECLARED AOK \u0444
\n.<\/span>
\nwhere am i, boole?\u00a0 pp. 124-125<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

.<\/span>
\nThe back and forth between the patient and the computer (which would have seemed dated before the advent of webchat) gives us some background detail about his world and shows the totalitarian nature of his confinement. It\u2019s okay I guess, but it\u2019s mostly wordplay.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Their Thousandth Season<\/em><\/strong> by Edward Bryant (Clarion #2<\/em>, 1972) is one of his \u2018Cinnibar\u2019 stories, a series set in a city of the future. This one opens with a number of media types at a party: Tournalmine, a successful actress, Francie, Sternig, etc. Most of the story, in between the various sex scenes, concerns Sternig and Francie\u2019s relationship breakup and (spoiler) how they eventually get back together again\u2014possibly a recurrent event due to the ability of these people to have their memories edited:<\/p>\n

\u201cCan\u2019t remember? Or won\u2019t?\u201d
\n\u201cCan\u2019t,\u201d [Sternig] says. \u201cI think it\u2019s can\u2019t. I\u2019m not really sure. I have my mind sponged periodically. Don\u2019t you?\u201d
\nTourmaline nods. \u201cOccasionally. As seldom as I can. I prefer to keep as many memories as possible. Otherwise I tend to repeat my mistakes.\u201d
\n\u201cIn time,\u201d says Sternig, \u201cwe all repeat.\u201d
\n\u201cSome of us more often than others.\u201d She gestures across the hall. \u201cFrancie goes to the sponge once a year, maybe more. I suspect her of monthly visits, even weekly.\u201d
\n\u201cI suppose she doesn\u2019t like her memories,\u201d he says.\u00a0 p. 151<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is okay, I guess, and, if you are interested in the dysfunctional emotional lives and ennui of jaded near-immortals, you\u2019ll probably like it more than me.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Eurema\u2019s Dam<\/em><\/strong> by R. A. Lafferty (New Dimensions #2<\/em>, 1972) is about an idiot savant called Albert, who is a genius inventor:<\/p>\n

Even his mother had to admit that Albert was a slow child. What else can you call a boy who doesn\u2019t begin to talk till he is four years old, who won\u2019t learn to handle a spoon till he is six, who can\u2019t operate a doorknob till he is eight? What else can you say about one who put his shoes on the wrong feet and walked in pain? And who had to be told to close his mouth after yawning?\u00a0 pp. 158-159<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We then see the various adventures (and misadventures) Albert has while growing up: he makes a smarter copy of himself called Danny, which goes off with his girlfriend Alice; he solves the problem of smog and teenagers; he makes a hunch machine; and so on.
\nEventually he wins the Eurema trophy (named after synthetic Greek goddess of invention) and gives a disconcerting speech:<\/p>\n

\u201cEurema does not look like that!\u201d Albert gawked out and pointed suddenly at the trophy. \u201cNo, no, that isn\u2019t her at all. Eurema walks backward and is blind. And her mother is a brainless hulk.\u201d
\nEverybody was watching him with pained expression. \u201cNothing rises without a leaven,\u201d Albert tried to explain, \u201cbut the yeast is itself a fungus and a disease. You be regularizers all, splendid and supreme. But you cannot live without the irregulars. You will die, and who will tell you that you are dead? When there are no longer any deprived or insufficient, who will invent? What will you do when there are none of us defectives left? Who will leaven your lump then?\u201d
\n\u201cAre you unwell?\u201d the master of ceremonies asked him quietly. \u201cShould you not make an end of it? People will understand.\u201d
\n\u201cOf course I\u2019m unwell. Always have been,\u201d Albert said. \u201cWhat good would I be otherwise? You set the ideal that all should be healthy and well adjusted. No! No! Were we all well-adjusted, we would ossify and die. The world is kept healthy only by some of the unhealthy minds lurking in it. The first implement made by man was not a scraper or celt or stone knife. It was a crutch, and it wasn\u2019t devised by a hale man.\u201d
\n\u201cPerhaps you should rest,\u201d a functionary said in a low voice, for this sort of rambling nonsense talk had never been heard at an awards dinner before.\u00a0 pp. 166-167<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eventually his hunch machine suggests to him that, rather than serving mankind, he can take advantage of them.
\nThis Hugo Award co-winner (Best Short Story 1972, along with the Kornbluth & Pohl piece above) is a pleasant enough read, and is occasionally amusing, but it rather drifts to a halt at the end. Perhaps Lafferty\u2019s whimsical story telling is an acquired taste.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Zero Gee<\/em><\/strong> by Ben Bova (Again, Dangerous Visions<\/em>, 1972)7<\/sup> is one of his \u2018Kinsman\u2019 series of stories featuring the eponymous astronaut, and it opens with a group of Air Force guys and press reporters discussing Kinsman\u2019s forthcoming mission in orbit with an attractive Life<\/em> magazine photographer:<\/p>\n

\u201cI know this mission is strictly for publicity,\u201d Calder said, \u201cbut Kinsman? In orbit for three days with Life magazine\u2019s prettiest female? Does Murdock want publicity or a paternity suit?\u201d
\n\u201cCome on, Chet\u2019s not that bad . . .\u201d
\n\u201cOh no? From the stories I hear about your few weeks up at the NASA Ames center, Kinsman cut a swath from Berkeley to North Beach.\u201d
\nTenny countered, \u201cHe\u2019s young and good-looking. And the girls haven\u2019t had many single astronauts to play with. NASA\u2019s gang is a bunch of old farts compared to my kids. But Chet\u2019s the best of the bunch, no fooling.\u201d
\nCalder looked unconvinced.
\n\u201cListen. When we were training at Edwards, know what Kinsman did? Built a biplane, an honest-to-God replica of a Spad fighter. From the ground up. He\u2019s a solid citizen.\u201d
\n\u201cYes, and then he played Red Baron for six weeks. Didn\u2019t he get into trouble for buzzing an airliner?\u201d
\nTenny\u2019s reply was cut off by a burst of talk and laughter. Half a dozen lean, lithe young men in Air Force blues\u2014captains, all of them\u2014trotted down the carpeted stairs that led into the bar.
\n\u201cThere they are,\u201d said Tenny. \u201cYou can ask Chet about it yourself.\u201d
\nKinsman looked no different from the other Air Force astronauts. Slightly under six feet tall, thin with the leanness of youth, dark hair cut in the short flat military style, blue-gray eyes, long bony face. He was grinning broadly at the moment, as he and the other five astronauts grabbed chairs in one comer of the bar and called their orders to the lone bartender.\u00a0 pp. 171-172<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rest of the opening becomes progressively more risqu\u00e9 as the group discuss the problems of zero gee sex\u2014and then Kinsman is told that the third member of the crew will be another woman. Intended, presumably, as a chaperone.
\nThe rest of the story takes place in orbit, and largely concerns the interplay of the three characters, Kinsman, Linda (the photographer), and Jill (the other astronaut). Kinsman spends a considerable amount of time and thought trying to get Linda in the sack, something that is made easier when Jill eventually gives him a free run.
\nNotable moments during this section are the scenes where Kinsman and Linda are EVA during sunset, and when Linda reveals that she had a baby when she was younger but gave it up.
\nThe story ends, of course, with Kinsman (spoiler) wanting more than just casual sex from Linda, but she isn\u2019t interested.
\nI thought this was a pretty good story that was well told, but it seems pretty dated nowadays and I doubt it will satisfy anyone. People will either take issue with Kinsman\u2019s sexism (which will also be taken as the story\u2019s and the author\u2019s sexism\u2014nowadays these viewpoints are all too often represented as the same thing, all based on a reader\u2019s subjective impression of the text), or they will be entirely unconvinced by Kinsman\u2019s change of heart (why would a man who has had so many women suddenly go all doe-eyed over Linda?) I\u2019d have to concede that the latter feels like a liberal writer\u2019s feminist cop-out, although without it there wouldn\u2019t be much of a story.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Sky Blue<\/em><\/strong> by Alexei Panshin and Cory Panshin (Amazing<\/em>, March 1972) follows up Alexi\u2019s appearance in last year\u2019s volume with a collaboration with his partner Cory.
\nThe story opens with a spaceship getting lost, after which the pilot wrecks the engines trying to solve the problem before killing himself. Three of the passengers bemoan their fate:<\/p>\n

Being lost so suddenly was as painful and frustrating to Triphammer and Puddleduck as an interrupted fuck.
\nSuddenly their answers were of no use to them. Oh, it hurt.
\nTriphammer, Puddleduck and Mount Rushmore were the highest huddle of all. They gathered by a candle in one room. Triphammer paced frantically, Puddleduck nodded at appropriate moments, and Mount Rushmore loomed. Harold looked out through the curtains into the universe.
\nTriphammer said, \u201cOh, losings. Screamie! The action, pop-a-dop.\u201d Her face could not contain her regret.
\nPuddleduck nodded. \u201cMisery,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cMisery,\u201d said Mount Rushmore.
\nHarold said, \u201cThere\u2019s somebody walking by outside.\u201d\u00a0 p. 204<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A tenticular alien has arrived. Harold, the son of Triphammer and Puddleduck, is not incapacitated by fear like they are and manages to communicate with the alien, who then changes into an old man to calm the parents down. The alien then points out its nearby home world, and says the humans can use it.
\nThe humans (spoiler) subsequently trash the planet looking for something called The Third Thing, so they put Harold (now called Sky Blue) on an orbiting moon to ambush the Landlord Thing (the alien) when he returns. Sky Blue shoots the alien when he turns up but does not kill him.
\nThe Landlord Thing then tells Sky Blue to heal the planet, which he miraculously does. Sky Blue\u2019s parents then arrive to tell him about the reversal of all the harm they have done, and how the material they\u2019ve mined has vanished. Sky Blue tells them they have been given a second chance, and then he leaves with the Landlord Thing.
\nIf you want an ecological fairy tale told in sub-Laffertyesque cutesy with added random events, then this will be right up your street. For me, it was the joint worst story in the anthology along with the Russ.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Miss Omega Raven<\/em><\/strong> by Naomi Mitchison (Nova #2<\/em>, 1972)8<\/sup> is an account of an uplifted raven (the bird\u2019s intelligence has been experimentally increased) who goes from Omega to Alpha in her flock:<\/p>\n

This way each took orders and gave orders, each pecked in punishment and was herself pecked; it was the same with the husbands. Only the most beautiful, the bravest, the top raven Alpha Corax, gave orders. Nobody pecked him. He led the flock to roost or to hunt. He watched and warned for enemies and sometimes attacked. His beak was sharpest.
\nBut I was lowest of the low. She\u2014the other unmated\u2014pecked me and I had to accept this, jumping away from food, not pecking back. All that was in the deep part of me. I could not escape being how I was. There was no choice. But also I was angry and that anger was in the other part of me driving me to plan. That part of me thought of a future in which I would not be pecked. I knew I was becoming ugly. My feathers were draggled. I was thin, for I always got the worst share, either of flesh or eggs or the rarer grain and nuts. No wonder I was a pecked on with nobody to peck. Had God-man made me this? If he had not made me something other I could not have questioned what I was.\u00a0 pp. 217-218<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I thought this story, though short and slight, was an interesting and intriguing piece.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Patron of the Arts<\/em><\/strong> by William Rotsler (Universe #2<\/em>, 1972) initially tells tell us about the life of Brian Thorne, a wealthy patron of the arts in our near future. Thorne is married to a younger woman, Madelon, and they have an open relationship. This latter, along with some of the other background detail, makes this world seem a little like an extrapolated version of the 1960s or 1970s.
\nThen Michael Cilento comes on the scene. Cilento is an artist who creates \u201cmolecular constructs,\u201d works of art that are part holographic image and part emotional transmitter. Trent attempts to commission a construct of Madelon from Cilento, but the latter refuses, saying he will do it for nothing.
\nThe next part of the story (spoiler) sees Trent learning of the pair\u2019s travels, and their affair. But not, as normal, from Madelon. Eventually, the construct is finished, and Trent goes to view it:<\/p>\n

It drew me from the doorway. Everyone, everything was forgotten, including the original and the creator with me. There was only the cube. The vibrations were getting to me and my pulse increased. Even knowing that pulse generators were working on my alpha waves and broadcast projectors were doing this and sonics were doing that and my own alpha wave was being synchronized and reprojected did not affect me. Only the cube affected me. All else was forgotten.
\n[. . .]
\nThe figure of Madelon sat there, proudly naked, breathing normally with that fantastically lifelike movement possible to the skilled molecular constructors. The figure had none of the flamboyance that Caruthers or Raeburn brought to their figures, so delighted in their ability to bring \u201clife\u201d to their work that they saw nothing else.
\nBut Mike had restraint. He had power in his work, understatement, demanding that the viewer put something of himself into it.
\nI walked around to the back. Madelon was no longer sitting on the throne. It was empty, and beyond it, stretching to the horizon, was an ocean and above the toppling waves, stars. New constellations glowed. A meteor flashed. I stepped back to the side. The throne was unchanged but Madelon was back. She sat there, a queen, waiting.
\nI walked around the cube. She was on the other side, waiting, breathing, being. But in back she was gone.
\nBut to where?<\/em>\u00a0 p. 252<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Trent then finds out, of course, that she is leaving him for Cilento, which sets up the story\u2019s neat closing line:9<\/sup><\/p>\n

The cube is more than Madelon or the sum of the sum of all the Madelons who ever existed. But the reality of art is not the reality of reality.\u00a0 p. 254<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If this story has a weakness it is in attempting to convey the effect of art of the viewer or listener (this is nearly always a shortcoming in stories about music, for example), but it\u2019s still a pretty good piece, and a worthy Hugo and Nebula Award finalist (I thought it was a winner).<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Grasshopper Time<\/em><\/strong> by Gordon Eklund (F&SF<\/em>, March 1972) begins with an alien or mutant called Angel (we learn later his mother was human, his father something else) who finds two young children in the desert. He takes them back to his cave and there he learns (partially by telepathy, partially by listening) that their parents were recently shot and killed. Strangely, they aren\u2019t grieving.
\nAfter a week or so Angel and the girl go to collect wood, during which he ends up having to save her from a man who attacks her. He also picks up from the man\u2019s mind that people are looking for the children, and that search parties will shortly arrive in the area of the cave. Then he and the girl find some baby rabbits whose mother is dead, so they take them back to the cave.
\nDays later Angel senses the search parties in the area are beginning to leave but, at one point when he is distracted by Sarah showing him a picture she has drawn on the cave wall, Richard is shot. Angel rushes outside and fights with the man (in a somewhat confusing scene). Later we find Angel was shot and badly injured but has subsequently regenerated.
\nSarah then leaves him because he can\u2019t die. He looks at her painting once more before also leaving the cave.
\nThis, like a number of stories I\u2019ve read by Eklund, is a competently told piece but the (sometimes almost random) events and situations that unfold in this do not sum to a normal story. Barely okay.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Hero <\/em><\/strong>by Joe Haldeman (Analog<\/em>, June 1972)10<\/sup> is the first of a handful of \u2018Forever War\u2019 stories11<\/sup> that appeared in Analog<\/em> in the early to mid-1970s (and which were eventually fixed-up into the Hugo and Nebula Award winning novel of the same name).
\nThe story\u2014told from the cynical viewpoint of one of the grunts, Private William Mandela\u2014gets off to a cracking start with a sergeant showing a squad of soldiers an \u201cEight Silent Ways to Kill\u201d film\u2014which uses brainwiped criminals as subjects. During the subsequent Q&A it becomes apparent that the soldiers are being trained to fight an alien race called the Taurans, and that this is a very different army:<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the important thing.\u201d He stabbed a finger at the screen. That\u2019s why those eight convicts got caulked for your benefit . . . you\u2019ve got to find out how to kill Taurans, and be able to do it whether you have a
\nmegawatt laser or just an emery board.\u201d
\n[. . .]
\n\u201cAny more questions?\u201d Nobody raised a hand.
\n\u201cOK.\u2014tench-hut!\u201d We staggered upright and he looked at us expectantly.
\n\u201cScrew you, sir,\u201d came the tired chorus.
\n\u201cLouder!\u201d
\n\u201cSCREW YOU, SIR!\u201d
\nOne of the army\u2019s less-inspired morale devices.\u00a0 p. 278<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After this eye-opening beginning (well, it was in the mid-seventies) the surprises come in an almost constant stream: we find out that Mandela is in an elite conscripted army (the UN Expeditionary Force recruits all have IQs of over 150) formed to fight a war with the alien Taurans at relativistic distances; marijuana is legal; casual sex between the co-ed recruits compulsory; and then, just as all this is sinking in, they shoot off on a three week trip to Pluto (at a constant 2g) for advanced training.
\nThis next part of the story is a riveting read that combines a brutal training regime (armoured spacesuits, live ammunition and capital punishment) and a brutal environment (there is a lot of science involved in staying alive at just over zero K). But, despite their training, some of them die in accidents.
\nAfter a number of war games, some of which are lethal (three more die in the final exercise) they move to Stargate, where they do some construction work before jumping to the system where they will attack a Tauran base.
\nThe concluding part of the story (spoiler), which covers the combat operation, sees them dodging a missile attack on the way down to the planet that houses a Tauran base: there, they find that the terrain is similar to South American jungle (so much for all that training on Charon). Then, when they end up killing a group of upright herbivores (they discover this from the stomach contents of one of the corpses), several of the platoon\u2019s Rhine-sensitive personnel develop everything from headaches to fatal cerebral haemorrhages (the creatures are obviously telepathic and their dying transmissions have proved lethal to some). Finally, when they reach the base and discuss the plan of attack, Potter (Mandella\u2019s partner) starts arguing with the sergeant about unnecessarily killing all the Taurans. This becomes academic when the sergeant triggers a post-hypnotic battle command:<\/p>\n

I hardly heard him, for trying to keep track of what was going on in my skull. I knew it was just posthypnotic suggestion, even remembered the session in Missouri when they\u2019d implanted it, but that didn\u2019t make it any less compelling. My mind reeled under the strong pseudo-memories; shaggy hulks that were Taurans\u2014not at all what we now knew they looked like\u2014boarding a colonist\u2019s vessel, eating babies while mothers watched in screaming terror\u2014the colonists never took babies; they wouldn\u2019t stand the acceleration\u2014then raping the women to death with huge veined purple members\u2014ridiculous that they would feel desire for humans\u2014holding the men down while they plucked flesh from their living bodies and gobbled it . . . a hundred grisly details as sharply remembered as the events of a minute ago, ridiculously overdone and logically absurd; but while my conscious mind was reflecting the silliness, somewhere much deeper, down in that sleeping giant where we keep our real motives and morals, something was thirsting for alien blood, secure in the conviction that the noblest thing a man could do would be to die killing one of those horrible monsters . . .\u00a0 pp. 332-333<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The final scenes are realistically grisly, especially when it becomes apparent that the Taurans have no concept of hand to hand fighting (for those who were around at the time, there may be echoes of the My Lai massacre).12<\/sup>
\nIn general, this was a much darker and more cynical story than I remembered and, although it is very good or better for most of its length (and an exemplar of how traditional SF was being remade by the New Wave in the early seventies), it tails off a little towards the end. Still, a more than worthy Hugo finalist, and I\u2019d probably have put it at the top of my list.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

When We Went to See the End of the World<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Silverberg (Universe #2<\/em>, 1972) is his second story in the volume, and another in which he continues to channel his inner Robert Sheckley. This one has a couple at a party who describe their recent time-travel trip to the end of the world\u2014and then the other couples talk about their trips there, all of which are different:<\/p>\n

\u201cHow long ago did you do it?\u201d Eddie said to Nick.
\n\u201cSunday afternoon. I guess we were about the first.\u201d
\n\u201cGreat trip, isn\u2019t it?\u201d Eddie said. \u201cA little somber, though. When the last hill crumbles into the sea.\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s not what we saw,\u201d said Jane. \u201cAnd you didn\u2019t see the crab? Maybe we were on different trips.\u201d
\nMike said, \u201cWhat was it like for you, Eddie?\u201d
\nEddie put his arms around Cynthia from behind. He said, \u201cThey put us into this little capsule, with a porthole, you know, and a lot of instruments and\u2014\u201d
\n\u201cWe heard that part,\u201d said Paula. \u201cWhat did you see?\u201d
\n\u201cThe end of the world,\u201d Eddie said. \u201cWhen water covers everything. The sun and the moon were in the sky at the same time\u2014\u201d
\n\u201cWe didn\u2019t see the moon at all,\u201d Jane remarked. \u201cIt just wasn\u2019t there.\u00a0 p. 343<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, in the background, we learn a lot about the current state of the world and its many ongoing catastrophes: earthquakes, mutant amoeba, cholera outbreaks, presidential assassinations, etc. (My favourite line from the story is, \u201cIt looked like Detroit after the union nuked Ford.\u201d)
\nThe irony of time-travelling to the end of the world when it is happening around you is highlighted in the closing lines of the story:<\/p>\n

Nick and Jane discussed where they would go for their next vacation. \u201cWhat about going to see the end of the world all over again?\u201d Jane suggested, and Nick laughed quite a good deal.\u00a0 p. 349<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pretty good.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Painwise <\/em><\/strong>by James Tiptree, Jr. (F&SF<\/em>, February 1972) has a great hook opening (and one similar to John Baxter\u2019s The Hands<\/em> in New Writings in SF #6<\/em>, reviewed here last week):<\/p>\n

He was wise to the ways of pain. He had to be, for he felt none.
\nWhen the Xenons put electrodes to his testicles, he was vastly entertained by the pretty lights.
\nWhen the Ylls fed firewasps into his nostrils and other body orifices, the resultant rainbows pleased him. And when later they regressed to simple disjointments and eviscerations, he noted with interest the deepening orchid hues that stood for irreversible harm.\u00a0 p. 350<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The protagonist is wired to experience pain as colour and, as he completes his repeated missions to observe aliens (who variously mutilate or torture him), a boditech mechanism called Amanda puts him back together again.
\nEventually there is a battle of wills between him and Amanda\u2014he wants her to provide conversation\u2014and he eventually realises that their mission is overdue and she is faulty. At this point Amanda malfunctions and he is marooned in space.
\nThe second part of the story sees him picked up by a starship occupied by three aliens, a bushbaby like creature called Lovebaby, the butterfly-like Ragglebomb, and the python-like Muscle. None of them can stand the pain experienced by the universe\u2019s creatures (they are empaths\/telepaths) so they use him to go and get them the foodstuffs they desire. Initially he complies, but then stops helping them when he realises they are not going to take him back to Earth.
\nIn the final part of the story (spoiler) he hears the phrase \u201csnap, crackle and pop\u201d from their descriptions of the sounds picked up on one of the planets. He knows this is Earth, so he recites a long list of enticing foodstuffs to encourage them to go there.
\nThe story ends with him back on Earth, where he suddenly experiences a massive amount of pain. When he empathically transmits this to the other three they all try to get back to the shelter of the ship. For whatever reason, he makes the decision to stay rather than leave with them.
\nThis is an original, entertaining, and trippy piece, but it appears to get off to a false start (the Amanda section), and I\u2019m not sure that any of the rest of it bears close examination.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

Terry Carr\u2019s Introduction<\/em><\/strong> is an odd piece about the cancellation of the Apollo space program in 1972. Carr notes that the American public has lost interest in this, and (eventually) states that any future programs must relate more directly to the people. But he takes a odd route to get to that point, first by judging the delayed launch programming against other TV entertainment like the Mary Tyler Moore<\/em> show, and then by making flippant suggestions about how they could make the coverage more interesting:<\/p>\n

So imagine, if you can, how much more interesting those routine transmissions from space could be if, say, a couple of the astronauts began to kibitz about getting vasectomies after they splash down. Or if, nearing the end of a long orbiting mission, one of them confided to Houston Control that he\u2019d had a nocturnal emission.
\nFor that matter, how the ratings might perk up if one of those bored and boring news analysts were to say \u201cI\u2019m going to do something I promised myself I\u2019d never do. I\u2019m going to go take a leak while we\u2019re waiting.\u201d\u00a0 p. x<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bizarre, or puerile, or both.
\nHonorable Mentions<\/em><\/strong> by Terry Carr is a page of story recommendations (presumable the also-rans that didn\u2019t make it into the book).13<\/sup> I guess if Carr had a larger volume than this 370 pp. Ballantine paperback\u2014a Dozois bug-crusher for instance\u2014several of these would also have also been selected. Looking at the list I\u2019m not sure this would have improved the overall quality. I\u2019m particularly surprised that Poul Anderson\u2019s Goat Song<\/em> (F&SF<\/em>, February 1972) a Hugo and Nebula winner, and obvious crowdpleaser, isn’t in this book or on that list.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

After a good start to Carr\u2019s \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 series last year, this is a disappointing follow-up, with much of the first half containing stories that are average at best (by the time I finished the Panshin story, I wondered what on Earth was going on). The remainder of the book pulls out of the dive but that still leaves us with, by my count, five stories that deserve to be here (out of sixteen), four I wouldn\u2019t quibble about, and seven that shouldn\u2019t have been included.14<\/sup>
\nPart of the problem here is that Carr seems to have a penchant for non-story stories, i.e. those without a visible plot or other arc that gives them some structure or point, and which don\u2019t appear to bring anything else to the table.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. Cy Chauvin (Amazing, March 1975<\/a><\/em>) opens his review with this comment:<\/p>\n

Terry Carr and Donald Wollheim used to edit The World\u2019s Best SF<\/em> series for Ace Books, generally considered for many years the best of the \u2018best\u2019 collections. Now both Carr and Wollheim have left Ace and started best-of-the-year collections of their own. Carr\u2019s is easily the better of the two. He has managed to steer a course between the more conservative, traditional\u2014and I\u2019m afraid occasionally stodgy\u2014tastes of Wollheim, and the experimental and too often mainstream mixture of prose and poetry that turns up in the Harrison-Aldiss Best SF (the other longest running best of the year series).\u00a0 p. 117<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fair comment perhaps, although I\u2019ve only read one Wollheim volume, for 1976, and I thought that was better than the Carr. I\u2019d add that perhaps Carr drifted too far towards Harrison and Aldiss in this volume but, on reflection, I don\u2019t think many of Carr\u2019s story choices are<\/em> too experimental or New Wave: they\u2019re just not very good.
\nChauvin goes on to say:<\/p>\n

Of course, \u2018best\u2019 collections are still no substitute for the actual original publications themselves, no matter how ably edited, since no reader\u2019s and editor\u2019s tastes will ever completely agree. I, for instance, cannot understand why Carr failed to include Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s Hugo-winning novella \u201cThe Word For The World is Forest\u201d in his collection, or even on his list of Honorable Mentions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As for the stories themselves, he seems lukewarm about the Panshin (\u201cunsubtle ecological message,\u201d \u201csimplistic moralizing\u201d), but thinks the Russ a \u201cvery strong\u201d story about a Utopian world where \u201call the problems have been solved except that of the human condition.\u201d He adds:<\/p>\n

Russ has that rare ability to drop the reader into a strange future world and just let him figure out what is going on, without resorting to explanatory lectures or other artificial devices. She relies instead on realistically-placed dialog and description, and makes the story a puzzle that the reader has to put together. There are certain rewards gained by doing this, and I don\u2019t think Russ makes her stories \u201cdifficult\u201d or obscure for their own sake; there is as much reason and logic behind what she makes difficult and obscure in her stories as there is in what she makes easy and clear.\u00a0 p. 117-118<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chauvin likes the first of the Silverberg stories better than the second (\u201ca much weaker effort\u201d). He thinks the Tiptree and Eklund stories will bear rereading, and that Haldeman\u2019s Hero<\/em> is \u201ca solid meaty novella,\u201d although it does not need to be an SF story. He finishes by rating the Wolfe as \u201cexcellent,\u201d and the Lafferty, \u201cfair.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s an interesting, and perhaps illuminating, review. Worth reading.<\/p>\n

P. Schuyler Miller (Analog, December 1973<\/a><\/em>) says this volume is the best of the \u2018Bests\u2019 he has read so far (his review of the Carr volume is followed by one of Forrest J. Ackermann\u2019s).
\nHe notes that five of the stories come from three of the field\u2019s magazines (Amazing<\/em>, Analog<\/em>, and three from F&SF<\/em>) and eleven come from original anthologies (but, surprisingly, only one from Again, Dangerous Visions<\/em>). Miller says that:<\/p>\n

The theme of most of the stories\u2014and perhaps Terry Carr is saying that this is the theme of most present-day science fiction\u2014might be called \u201cOur world and welcome to it!\u201d The stories project all too visible forces and trends in our own society into the near future.\u00a0 p. 165<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He adds later:<\/p>\n

[These] stories, in one way or another, are about ourselves. You can think of them as distorting mirrors reflecting the present, or as plane mirrors showing what may be. \u00a0p. 165<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Miller excludes the Wolfe from the above categories (\u201cthe best story in the book\u201d), and the Haldeman (a cruder, more cynical extension of Heinlein\u2019s \u2018Starship Troopers\u2019\u201d), Tiptree, Jr., and Bova. He also omits the Mitchison, Panshin and Eklund stories at the end, which takes him up to about half the book\u2014so probably not \u201cmost of the stories\u201d then. Oh well.
\nHis two favourites apart from the Wolfe story are Anderson\u2019s Fortune Hunter<\/em>, and William Rotsler\u2019s Patron of the Arts<\/em>, but he thinks \u201cthere isn\u2019t a bad story in the book.\u201d Some people are easily pleased.<\/p>\n

The uncredited review in Vertex, December 1973<\/a><\/em> praises Carr\u2019s author choice but then has this:<\/p>\n

Our only disagreement with Mr. Carr is his obvious leaning towards the \u201cnew wave\u2019\u2019 type of fiction, and his apparent abhorrence of anything which smacks of plain, old-fashioned story telling. If that\u2019s your bag (new wave), this is your book.\u00a0 p. 11<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They have a point about the aversion to \u201cstorytelling,\u201d old-fashioned or otherwise.<\/p>\n

2. These were the results from our group read poll (11 voters\/33 votes):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

3. The editor\u2019s introduction to the Kornbluth & Pohl story in F&SF<\/em> states:<\/p>\n

Cyril Kornbluth died in 1958, still a young man, but now that Fred Pohl is writing sf again we have this new story (based on notes made while Kornbluth was alive) to add to a memorable body of work under the most famous collaborative byline in sf.\u00a0 p. 5<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Mark Rich\u2019s book, C. M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary<\/em>, there were more than notes left:<\/p>\n

Frederik Pohl, 1958, May 23: letter to Mary Kornbluth (SU). \u201cHarry Altshuler turned up a story of Cyril\u2019s called The Meeting<\/em> which he turned over to me. I suppose you\u2019ve read it\u2014it\u2019s about a PTA meeting at a thinly-disguised Berman School. Harry diligently sent it out to half a dozen markets or so, but there\u2019s one obvious possibility he missed\u2014The New Yorker<\/em>\u2014so so I\u2019ve banged it out to them, just on the chance.\u201d Although Pohl obviously thought it worth trying in that market, it was the only one he tried. (Chapter 28 footnote 7.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later on, Pohl spoke to Mary Kornbluth about revising several unsold mainstream stories into SF ones:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt occurs to me that some of the non-science-fiction shorts might be reworkable into science fiction\u2014assuming they won\u2019t sell in their present form. This has the definite advantage, assuming I do the reworking, of building up the inventory of Pohl and Kornbluth collaborations, to the point where we might be able to get Ballantine to do a collection. But The Meeting<\/em> doesn\u2019t, offhand, seem like an easily adaptable one.\u201d (Chapter 29)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4. The Kornbluths had a child, John, with similar problems. According to Mark Rich\u2019s biography:<\/p>\n

His story \u201cThe Meeting\u201d was about a PTA meeting at a school that was essentially Berman School, which John had been attending. (Chapter 28)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One wonders what dark night of the soul led to the writing of this story.<\/p>\n

5. It wasn\u2019t just me that was baffled by Russ\u2019s story: the half-dozen people who bothered to comment in our Facebook group read thread were equally baffled, bar one person, who didn\u2019t explain further. Read their comments<\/a> for yourself.<\/p>\n

6. In Jo Walton\u2019s An Informal History of the Hugos<\/em>, Gardner Dozois says that Wolfe\u2019s The Fifth Head of Cerberus<\/em> is \u201cone of the best SF novellas every written.\u201d Rich Horton echoes this with his comment that it is \u201cone of the most amazing SF novellas ever.\u201d This may be a widespread view on the literary side of the field, but I\u2019m not sure that the story was viewed quite so glowingly elsewhere (e.g., it was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards but won neither, and was #3 in the Locus Poll for that year\u2014the usual caveats apply about award winners being partly determined by work availability, author popularity, zeitgeist etc.)<\/p>\n

7. Ben Bova\u2019s Zero Gee<\/em> is the only story from Harlan Ellison\u2019s major anthology Again, Dangerous Visions<\/em> that makes it into Carr\u2019s volume this year. I wonder if that is because Carr didn\u2019t want to use too many stories that people would have seen or if, like me, he just wasn\u2019t that impressed with the vast bulk of it.<\/p>\n

8. As I\u2019ve noted before, Harry Harrison encouraged Naomi Mitchison (aka Lady Haldane) back to writing SF after her 1962 classic Memoirs of a Spacewoman<\/em>. He first published her in The Year 2000<\/em> anthology (1970), and then in all four of the Nova<\/em> volumes (Mary and Joe<\/em> in the first volume, also 1970, was an extract from the previously mentioned novel). There were later stories in Peter Weston\u2019s Andromeda #1<\/em>, and a couple of other anthologies. Her ISFDB page is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

9. Well, that was the last line in the Universe #2<\/em> version of Patron of the Arts<\/em> (and reprinted in Nebula Award Stories #8<\/em>), but the Carr anthology uses a version which appeared in Vertex<\/em> #1, April 1973 (and which also appears to be the first four chapters from the subsequent novel). This latter version adds three pages of text where the couple go missing, and then suggests that another of Climento\u2019s works is a portal to an alien planet. I\u2019m not sure this adds to the original novelette, and probably spoils it a little (it turns a story about love lost into the start of an interplanetary adventure). It certainly doesn\u2019t make me want to pick up the novel version.<\/p>\n

10. Haldeman\u2019s story was one of at least two stories that Ben Bova published in Analog<\/em> in 1972 (another was Frederik Pohl\u2019s The Gold at Starbow\u2019s End<\/em>) which showed that the magazine was under new management.<\/p>\n

11. The stories that originally formed Haldeman\u2019s The Forever War<\/em> novel were: Hero<\/em> (Analog<\/em>, June 1972), We Are Very Happy Here<\/em> (Analog<\/em>, November 1973), This Best of All Possible Worlds<\/em> (Analog<\/em>, November 1974) End Game<\/em> (Analog, January 1975). However, I believe that We Are Very Happy Here<\/em> was replaced by You Can Never Go Home<\/em> (Amazing<\/em>, March 1975) in later versions of the novel. This latter story was the original darker and more dystopian version of the story (the beginning and end of both stories are similar\u2014about 10% of the length, according to Haldeman in the author\u2019s note that accompanies You Can Never Go Home<\/em>).<\/p>\n

12. The Wikipedia page on the My Lai massacre, the mass murder of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in 1968, is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

13. The Honorable Mentions list is:<\/p>\n

Conway, Gerard F.: \u201cFuneral Service,\u201d Universe 2<\/em>, Ace, 1972.
\nEklund, Gordon: \u201cStalking The Sun,\u201d Universe 2<\/em>, Ace, 1972.
\nMoon, Brian: \u201cCatholics,\u201d New American 15<\/em>.
\nNeville, Kris: \u201cMedical Practices Among The Immortals,\u201d Galaxy<\/em>, September 1972.
\nPangborn, Edgar: \u201cTiger Boy,\u201d Universe 2<\/em>, Ace, 1972.
\nPohl, Frederik: \u201cShaffery Among The Immortals, Fantasy & Science Fiction<\/em>, July 1972.
\nRobinson, Frank M.: \u201cEast Wind, West Wind,\u201d Nova 2<\/em>, Walker, 1972.
\nRocklynne, Ross: \u201cChing Witch!\u201d Again, Dangerous Visions<\/em>, Doubleday, 1972.
\nRuss, Joanna: \u201cUseful Phrases For The Tourist, Universe 2<\/em>, Ace, 1972.
\n\u2014\u201cWhen It Changed,\u201d Again, Dangerous Visions<\/em>, Doubleday, 1972.
\nSilverberg, Robert: \u201cNow + n, Now \u2014 n,\u201d Nova 2<\/em>, Walker 1972.
\nTiptree, James Jr.: \u201cFilomena & Greg & Rikki-Tikki & Barlow & The Alien,\u201d New Dimensions II<\/em>, Doubleday.
\n\u2014\u201cThe Milk Of Paradise,\u201d Again, Dangerous Visions<\/em>, Doubleday, 1972.
\nVonnegut, Kurt Jr.: \u201cThe Big Space Fuck,\u201d Again, Dangerous Visions<\/em>, Doubleday, 1972.
\nWolfe, Gene: \u201cIt\u2019s Very Clean,\u201d Generation<\/em>, Dell, 1972.<\/p>\n

14. There would normally be a table below giving the contents of all the \u2018Best Of\u2019 anthologies and all the award nominees, and what my choices for the year would be, etc.\u2014but I don\u2019t have the time, inclination, or energy to do this at the moment. I\u2019ll try and get to it when I review one of the other 1972 volumes (both the Harrison & Aldiss and the Ackerman look promising).\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: This is a disappointing follow-up to Carr\u2019s debut, with around half the stories not up to \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 standard: Carr seems to have a penchant for work without a decent plot or other arc that provides structure or a point. The best material comes from Joe Haldeman and Gene Wolfe (the novellas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-the-year-anthologies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-3ta","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13340"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14875,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13340\/revisions\/14875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}