{"id":13577,"date":"2021-03-17T15:21:35","date_gmt":"2021-03-17T15:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13577"},"modified":"2021-03-17T15:27:20","modified_gmt":"2021-03-17T15:27:20","slug":"5th-annual-edition-years-best-s-f-edited-by-judith-merril-1960","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13577","title":{"rendered":"Year’s Best S-F 5th Annual Edition, edited by Judith Merril, 1960"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Summary:
\nI was stunned to find that I was eight stories into this volume before I found a worthy choice: Flowers for Algernon<\/em>, by Daniel Keyes. Thereafter the other worthwhile candidates are A Death in the House<\/em> by Clifford D. Simak, The Sound Sweep<\/em> by J. G. Ballard, The Man Who Lost the Sea<\/em> by Theodore Sturgeon, Plentitude<\/em> by Will Mohler a.k.a. Will Worthington, and possibly A Day at the Beach<\/em> by Carol Emshwiller.
\nThe 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<\/em>-type novelettes from Randall Garrett and Mark Clifton), nearly all of which comes from non-genre publications.
\nYou get the feeling that Merril was riding around the far boundaries of the field rounding up strays rather than compiling a \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 anthology. One to miss.
\n[ISFDB page<\/a>][Book link<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Other reviews:1<\/sup>
\nAustin Beeman, Science Fiction Short Story Reviews<\/a>
\nAlfred Bester, F&SF, February 1961<\/a><\/em>
\nEverett F. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction<\/em> pp. 295 – 454
\nJohn Carnell, New Worlds Science Fiction #101, December 1960<\/a><\/em>
\nS. E. Cotts, Amazing Stories, March 1961<\/a><\/em>
\nP. Schuyler Miller, Analog, March 1961<\/a><\/em>
\nVarious, Goodreads<\/a><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, Judith Merril<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nThe Handler<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Damon Knight \u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Other Wife<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Jack Finney \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nNo Fire Burns<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Avram Davidson \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nNo, No, Not Rogov!<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Cordwainer Smith \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Shoreline at Sunset<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Ray Bradbury \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Dreamsman<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Gordon R. Dickson \u2217<\/strong>
\nMultum in Parvo<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Jack Sharkey \u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nFlowers for Algernon<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Daniel Keyes \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nA Death in the House<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Clifford D. Simak \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nMariana <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Fritz Leiber \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nAn Inquiry Concerning the Curvature of the Earth\u2019s Surface and Divers Investigations of a Metaphysical Nature<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Roger Price –
\nDay at the Beach <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Carol Emshwiller \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nWhat the Left Hand Was Doing<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Randall Garrett [as by Darrell T. Langart] \u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Sound Sweep<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by J. G. Ballard \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nPlenitude <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Will Mohler [as by Will Worthington] \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nThe Man Who Lost the Sea<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Theodore Sturgeon \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nMake a Prison<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Lawrence Block \u2217<\/strong>
\nWhat Now, Little Man?<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Mark Clifton \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nIntroduction <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 essay by Judith Merril
\nStory Introductions<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Judith Merril
\n\u201cWhat Do You Mean … Human?\u201d <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 essay by John W. Campbell, Jr.
\nSierra Sam<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Ralph Dighton
\nHot Argument<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 poem by Randall Garrett
\nMe <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 poem by Hilbert Schenck [as by Hilbert Schenck, Jr.]
\nThe Year\u2019s S-F, A Summary <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 essay by Judith Merril
\nHonorable Mentions<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 list by Judith Merril<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

[These story reviews were posted previously on sfshortstories.com. If you have already read them skip down to the \u2022\u2022\u2022 for the non-fiction and conclusion.]<\/p>\n

After Merril\u2019s brief Introduction<\/em> (of which more later) the volume opens with The Handler<\/em><\/strong> by Damon Knight (Rogue<\/em>, 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:<\/p>\n

\u201cSol and Ernie and Mack, my writers, Shakespeare should have been so lucky\u2014\u201d One by one, they came up to shake the big man\u2019s hand as he called their names; the women kissed him and cried. \u201cMy stand-in,\u201d the big man was calling out, and \u201cmy caddy,\u201d and \u201cnow,\u201d he said, as the room quieted a little, people flushed and sore-throated with enthusiasm, \u201cI want you to meet my handler.\u201d\u00a0 p. 11<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At this point Pete becomes motionless, and a dwarf\u2014his \u201chandler\u201d\u2014climbs out of Pete\u2019s 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.
\nAfter his initial appearance Fred is variously described as \u201clittle man\u201d; \u201cwas a very small man, almost a dwarf, stoop-shouldered and roundbacked in a sweaty brown singlet and shorts\u201d; \u201chad a perspiring brown face under a shock of black hair\u201d; \u201cwas about forty, with a big nose and big soft brown eyes\u201d; \u201chis voice was cracked and uncertain\u201d. Fred also has \u201cknobby hands\u201d; \u201csad hound-dog eyes\u201d, 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\u2019s reaction to other\u2019s physical attractiveness (and possibly manner).
\nThe whole idea struck me a bit silly.
\n\u2217<\/strong> (Mediocre). 1,600 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Other Wife<\/em><\/strong> by Jack Finney (Saturday Evening Post<\/em>, January 30th<\/sup>, 1960) starts with a fairly stereotypical husband-wife encounter\u2014she\u2019s prattling on about her knitting and he\u2019s day-dreaming about a sports car\u2014which 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.
\nThe next part of the story sees the husband transported to an alternate world where, after seeing a \u201cCoco-Coola\u201d 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\u2014which is that he is married to another woman.
\nHe 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:<\/p>\n

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\u2019d read and liked. Then, down near the bottom of the rack my eye was caught by the words, \u201cBy Mark Twain.\u201d The cover showed an old side-wheeler steamboat, and the title was South From Cairo<\/em>. 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\u2019s it really was. I\u2019ve read every book he wrote\u2014Huckleberry Finn at least a dozen times since I discovered it when I was eleven years old.
\nBut 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. \u201c\u2018Finn, sir,\u2019 I answered the captain,\u201d the text read, \u201c\u2018but mostly they call me Huckleberry.\u2019\u201d
\nFor 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\u2014well, I didn\u2019t 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<\/em>.\u00a0 pp. 25-26<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This part of the story, and his realisation about what the odd coins in his change do\u2014see below\u2014is probably the best of it.
\nIn 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\u2014and that the Roosevelt will let him return.
\nThe 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 . . . .
\nI guess, overall, this story is okay, but it\u2019s 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\u2019t already a husband in the alternate world.)
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 5,850 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

No Fire Burns<\/em><\/strong> by Avram Davidson (Playboy<\/em>, 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.
\nInserted into this strand of the narrative is a section about an employee of Melichor\u2019s 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:<\/p>\n

There are lots worse crimes than murder.<\/em> 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\u2019s why you got to watch out for yourself.
\nThere are worse things than losing your home. <\/em>What? Catching leprosy?
\nAnd 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. <\/em>Well, any damn fool would know it was the last. In fact, anyone but a damn fool would do just that. That\u2019s what he did that time. (c)
\nNow, a dope like Aberdeen: he\u2019d probably stop his car. Stick his nose in someone else\u2019s tough luck. Anybody stupid enough to lend his rent money\u2014\u00a0 p. 38-39<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.
\nColles confronts Melchior with this information\u2014and 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\u2019s many psychopaths) has Melchior and Colles shot by Joe Clock and another man.
\nThis 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.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 6,350 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

No, No, Not Rogov!<\/em><\/strong> by Cordwainer Smith (If<\/em>, February 1959) is supposedly one of his \u2018Instrumentality of Mankind\u2019 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).
\nTheir work takes place during the reigns of Stalin and Khrushchev, and they have early success in using the device to see through other people\u2019s 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:<\/p>\n

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.
\nBut the needle was there and the needle transmitted into his mind more than his mind could stand.
\nThe synapses of his brain flicked like switches. The future flooded into him.
\nHe fainted.
\nCherpas leaped forward and lifted the needle. Rogov fell out of the chair.\u00a0 p. 61<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u2014and she also stands up at the moment of contact, altering the needle\u2019s position in her brain which kills her. Cherpas subsequently tells the minister that she eavesdropped on Rogov\u2019s connection using the old equipment, and that her husband saw something unbelievably hypnotic in the far future.
\nThe story concludes with Gauck telling the minister that the experiment is over (which I didn\u2019t find entirely convincing, i.e. a functionary telling a Soviet deputy minister what to do).
\nThere 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<\/em> seems rather fanciful.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 6,500 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Shoreline at Sunset<\/em><\/strong> by Ray Bradbury (F&SF<\/em>, 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:<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 p. 72<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u2014but does nothing when the waves gradually wash the mermaid back into the sea.
\nI thought perhaps the mermaid was a metaphor for the women or the relationships that the men can\u2019t keep but, whatever the story is about, it is typical of later Bradbury, i.e. more a prose poem than a story.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 3,350 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Dreamsman<\/em><\/strong> by Gordon R. Dickson (Star Science Fiction #6<\/em>, 1959) begins with a Mr Willer shaving, until:<\/p>\n

[He] poises the razor for its first stroke\u2014and 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.\u00a0 p. 78<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.
\nAt this point (spoiler) a man dressed in silver mesh arrives and reveals that Willer routinely disposes of psi-capable people so Earth people won\u2019t 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.
\nAn unconvincing squib that is a collection of worn out clich\u00e9s.
\n\u2217<\/strong> (Mediocre). 2,850 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Multum in Parvo<\/strong><\/em> by Jack Sharkey (The Gent<\/em>, December 1959)2<\/sup> isn\u2019t actually a short story but a quartet of vignettes that each end in a pun (or two, or have them all the way through)\u2014Feghoots, as I believe they are called in the SF field.3<\/sup>
\nThe first, Robots<\/em>, 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<\/em>, has Icarus flying towards the sun with a double pun ending, both of which are both okay; the third, Vampirism<\/em>, really goes for it, and has eight puns (maybe more) on the way through\u2014this is the best of the four by country mile; the last one, Atomic Fission<\/em>, has a decent single pun ending and a coda about fallout that I didn\u2019t get (the Vampirism<\/em> one would have made for a stronger finish).
I\u2019m not big on puns but this was okay, with the third section having considerably more bite than the others. Boom, tish.
\n<\/em>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 1,050 words.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Flowers for Algernon<\/em><\/strong> by Daniel Keyes (F&SF<\/em>, April 1959) is another story I\u2019ve 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:<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 pp. 92-93<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This latter refers to an experimental procedure that Drs Strauss and Nemur have developed which will, if successful, quadruple Charlie\u2019s IQ from 68 to well over two hundred.
\nThe 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\u2019 jokes:<\/p>\n

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.
\nThen 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.\u00a0 p. 97<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Charlie\u2019s 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\u2014but not in the way you would expect:<\/p>\n

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.
\nThey 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 \u201chey, there go the profits!\u201d . . . \u201cMazeltov!\u201d . . . and \u201cwell, he didn\u2019t work here very long . . .\u201d which invariably seem to follow the breaking of glass or dishware in a public restaurant) all seemed to confuse him.
\nWhen 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.
\n\u201cAll right! All right, you dope,\u201d shouted the owner, \u201cdon\u2019t just stand there! Get the broom and sweep that mess up. A broom . . . a broom, you idiot! It\u2019s in the kitchen. Sweep up all the pieces.\u201d
\nThe 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.
\n\u201cHere, sonny, over here there\u2019s a nice piece behind you . . .\u201d
\n\u201cC\u2019mon, do it again . . .\u201d
\n\u201cHe\u2019s not so dumb. It\u2019s easier to break \u2018em than to wash \u2019em . . .\u201d
\nAs 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.
\nI 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.
\nAnd I had been laughing at him too.
\nSuddenly, I was furious at myself and all those who were smirking at him. I jumped up and shouted, \u201cShut up! Leave him alone! It\u2019s not his fault he can\u2019t understand! He can\u2019t help what he is! But for God\u2019s sake . . . he\u2019s still a human being!\u00a0 pp. 112-113<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/em> moment.
\nThe rest of the piece (spoiler) charts Algernon the mouse\u2019s 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.
\nAn excellent story, and the best piece in the volume.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217\u00a0<\/strong>(Excellent). 12,500 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

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

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.
\nIt had crawled, or tried to crawl, into a clump of hazel brush, but hadn\u2019t 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.
\nIt was groaning, too, but not too loud\u2014just 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\u2019s nape.
\nOld 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.
\nBut this was a wild, hurt thing and he couldn\u2019t 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\u2014as if it were so horrible that it dragged one to it. And it stank in a way that no one had ever smelled before.\u00a0 p. 134-135<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eventually Mose manages to free the creature and takes it back to his farm (and his less than salubrious surroundings\u2014we 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\u2019s damaged ship, a bird cage-like machine.
\nWhen Mose wakes up the next day the alien has died\u2014and 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\u2019s body, which he subsequently replaces.
\nVarious 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\u2014but Mose has already ploughed over the grave to hide it, and bluntly tells them he will not reveal the location.
\nThe 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\u2019s loneliness has been established throughout the tale, he is delighted to see the creature\u2014but 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\u2019s company but will also have to sacrifice all the silver dollars he has hidden away\u2014his entire savings\u2014to make an internal part to repair the machine.
\nAfter 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\u2014but this time it is clear and not cloudy. It makes Mose feel happier, and gives him a sense of companionship.
\nThe final paragraph of the story then switches to the alien\u2019s point of view and, as well as bootstrapping the quality of this piece up another notch, partly reframes what has come before:<\/p>\n

It was dark and lonely and unending in the depths of space with no Companion. It might be long before another was obtainable.
\nIt 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.\u00a0 p. 154<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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 \u2018Best of Clifford Simak\u2019 volume, and a no-brainer for a \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 anthology as well.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Very good). 8,050 words<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Mariana <\/em><\/strong>by Fritz Leiber (Fantastic<\/em>, February 1960) opens with Mariana discovering a secret panel of switches in her house, one of which has a lit sign labelled \u201cTrees\u201d underneath. When her husband Jonathan comes home from work she asks him about the switches:<\/p>\n

\u201cDidn\u2019t you know they were radio trees? I didn\u2019t want to wait twenty-five years for them and they couldn\u2019t 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\u2019s vulgar but convenient.\u201d
\nAfter a bit she asked timidly, \u201cJonathan, are the radio pine trees ghostly as you drive through them?\u201d
\n\u201cOf course not! They\u2019re solid as this house and the rock under it\u2014to the eye and to the touch too. A person could even climb them. If you ever stirred outside you\u2019d know these things. The city station transmits pulses of alternating matter at sixty cycles a second. The science of it is over your head.\u201d\u00a0 p. 156<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While Jonathan is away at work the next day (spoiler) she switches off the trees, much to his annoyance when he comes home\u2014and then exacerbates matters the next day when she switches off the \u201cHouse\u201d. Next to go is \u201cJonathan\u201d when he angrily confronts her; then she switches off the \u201cStars\u201d in the sky above.
\nAfter sitting in the dark for several hours (no sun rises as there are no stars) she notices the fifth switch is off and labelled \u201cDoctor\u201d. 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 \u201cDoctor\u201d switch on a pedestal beside her and, when she is back in her virtual reality, she turns off the switch labelled \u201cMariana\u201d.
\nThis last action doesn\u2019t really make any sense\u2014why would therapy program let her suicide?\u2014but the surreal, dream-like logic of the story may work for some readers.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 1,900 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

An Inquiry Concerning the Curvature of the Earth\u2019s Surface and Divers Investigations of a Metaphysical Nature<\/em><\/strong> by Roger Price (Monocle Magazine<\/em>, 1958)4<\/sup> is an undeveloped squib about a growing Flat Earth movement in what would seem to be an alternate world:<\/p>\n

This Movement may turn out to be idealistic and premature but nevertheless I believe it should have \u201cits day in court.\u201d 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\u2019s Day by pushing a number of people off the edge. Their only difficulty so far has been in obtaining volunteers.\u00a0 p. 162<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not worth the two pages it is printed on.
\n– (Poor). 500 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Day at the Beach <\/strong><\/em>by Carol Emshwiller (F&SF<\/em>, 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\u2019s three-year old comes in from outside, he is described as having down growing along his backbone (the woman wonders \u201cif that was the way the three year olds had been before\u201d). The child also bites a small chunk out of his mother\u2019s shoulder when she chastises him for knocking over his oatmeal.
\nAfter this setup the couple decide\u2014partly because they think it\u2019s Saturday, partly because it\u2019s a nice day\u2014to go to the beach: they fill the car with only enough petrol to get there, and take a can\u2019s 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.
\nOn 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\u2019s 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.
\nThe 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\u2019s body still lying nearby). Then, on the way home:<\/p>\n

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.
\nShe leaned against Ben. \u201cThe beach always makes you tired,\u201d she said. \u201cI remember that from before too. I\u2019ll be able to sleep tonight.\u201d
\nThey drove silently along the wide empty parkway. The car had no lights, but that didn\u2019t matter.
\n\u201cWe did have a good day after all,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel renewed.\u201d
\n\u201cGood,\u201d he said.
\n[. . .]
\n\u201cWe had a good day,\u201d she said again. \u201cAnd Littleboy saw the sea.\u201d She put her hand on the sleeping boy\u2019s hair, gently so as not to disturb him and then she yawned. \u201cI wonder if it really was Saturday.\u201d\u00a0 p. 174<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Good). 4,100 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

What the Left Hand Was Doing <\/strong><\/em>by Randall Garrett (Astounding<\/em>, February 1960) begins with the protagonist, Spencer Candron, arriving at The Society for Mystical and Metaphysical Research, Inc.<\/em>, 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\u2019ien 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\u2019ien before the Chinese uncover his interstellar drive secrets.
\nThe 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:<\/p>\n

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.
\nHe didn\u2019t hate it. That would be deadly, for hate implies as much attraction as love\u2014the 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.
\nAnd he slowed.
\nHis mind would not accept contact with the ground, and his body was forced to follow suit. He slowed.
\nMinutes 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.
\nIn 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 \u201caccident.\u201d 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.\u00a0 p. 183<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not bad, and the next part of the story\u2014where he establishes himself in a hotel room in the city\u2014is 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\u2019ien. 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\u2019ien 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\u2019s getting a bit tired, something we find out after a two page lecture about the limits of the human mind and psionic abilities).
\nThe 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:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would ruin him,\u201d Candron broke in, before the senator could speak. \u201cIf 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?\u201d
\nSenator Kerotski nodded, and his nod said, \u201cI 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.\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d Candron said. \u201cWe 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.\u201d
\nTaggert patted his knees. \u201cWe 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.\u201d
\n\u201cWe know Ch\u2019ien\u2019s psychological pattern,\u201d Candron continued. \u201cHe\u2019s 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.\u201d\u00a0 pp. 202-203<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think this sort of thing is what was meant by \u201cpushing Campbell\u2019s buttons\u201d (i.e. pandering to the editor of Astounding<\/em> magazine, John W. Campbell, and his sometimes whacky ideas).
\nI eventually lost patience with this story as I\u2019m not a fan of work that (a) uses lazy SF ideas and terminology (\u201cpsi\u201d) or (b) is obviously padded with word-rate generating material (e.g. endless description and lectures). But most of all I don\u2019t like (c) stories (and movies\u2014I\u2019m looking at you Wonder Woman<\/em>) where the superhero protagonists can seemingly do anything they want and are never in any sort of jeopardy.
\nIf none of this applies to you, this may be an entertaining enough piece as it\u2019s readable enough.
\n\u2217<\/strong> (Mediocre). 10,900 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Sound Sweep<\/strong><\/em> by J. G. Ballard (Science Fantasy <\/em>#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\u2014applause that later turns into boos and catcalls. At midnight a man called Magnon, a mute who can \u201chear\u201d sound residues, arrives with his \u201csonovac\u201d:<\/p>\n

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\u2019s makeshift home\u2014the great collapsing Byzantine bed (Othello<\/em>) mounted against the microphone turret; the huge framed mirrors with their peeling silverscreen (Orpheus<\/em>) stacked in one corner by the bandstand; the stove (Trovatore<\/em>) set up on the program director\u2019s podium; the gilt-trimmed dressing table and wardrobe (Figaro<\/em>) stuffed with newspaper and magazine cuttings. He swept them methodically, moving the sonovac\u2019s nozzle in long strokes, drawing out the dead residues of sound that had accumulated during the day.
\nBy 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.\u00a0 p. 205<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u2014he visits every day to clean the apartment of sound residues, serve her tea, and listen to her tales of a comeback and revenge\u2014so he keeps this information to himself.
\nIn the next part of the story we learn more about her obsolescence (normal music was replaced by ultrasonic music which can\u2019t 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 \u201cno holes barred\u201d memoir).
\nThe rest of the story follows quite an involved plot, which adds another character, Ray Alto, a client and friend of Magnon\u2019s who is an ultrasonic composer, and Madame Gioconda\u2019s 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 \u201csound stockades\u201d\u2014a dumping ground for all the city\u2019s sonic waste\u2014and sieve through the detritus for fragments of conversation which will let them blackmail Le Grande. During this search Magnon recovers his powers of speech.
\nAll of this eventually rolls towards a climax where (spoiler) Madame LeGrande is scheduled\u2014after her blackmail attempt is successful\u2014to sing alongside a debut performance of Alto\u2019s ultrasonic Opus Zero<\/em>, much to the composer\u2019s 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 \u201ccat being strangled\u201d because \u201cwhat time alone hasn\u2019t done to her, cocaine and self-pity have.\u201d) 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:<\/p>\n

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.
\nHe barely recognized what she was singing: the Toreador song from Carmen<\/em>. 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.
\n[. . .]
\nSatisfied, 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.\u00a0 pp. 242-243<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u2019s distinctive style.
\nIf 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.
\nI note in passing that there are a significant number of drug references for the time.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+ (Good to very good). 14,500 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Plenitude<\/strong><\/em> by Will Mohler (F&SF<\/em>, 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\u2014why don\u2019t they live in the \u201cOld House in the Valley\u201d anymore, are the \u201cfunny men\u201d broken (explained by the narrator as a reference to derelict robots in the city), etc.\u2014the story soon establishes itself as a post-collapse one.5<\/sup>
\nThen, 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.
\nThe 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.
\nThe 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:<\/p>\n

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\u2014direct 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.
\nMy 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.\u00a0 pp. 253-254<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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:<\/p>\n

The corn-knife was not very sharp, but the skin of the sphere parted with disgusting ease. I heard Chris scream, \u201cNo! Dad! No!\u201d . . . but I kept hacking. We were nearly engulfed in the pinkish, albuminous nutritive which gushed from the ruptured sac. I can still smell it.
\nThe 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.
\nI 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.
\nThe agony of the creatures in the \u201cgrape\u201d (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.
\nMemory is merciful too in its imperfection. All I remember of our homeward journey is the silence of it.\u00a0 pp. 255-256<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.
\nThis isn\u2019t 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\u2019s reflective commentary also puts the reader right inside his head. This rich mixture transcends the slightness of the plot.
\nI\u2019ll be tracking down more of Mohler\u2019s work.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+ (Good to Very Good). 5,100 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

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

He doesn\u2019t 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.
\nThe 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, \u201cDon\u2019t move, boy. You\u2019ve got the bends. Don\u2019t even try to move.\u201d He had tried anyway. It hurt. So now, this time, he lies in the sand without moving, without trying. \u00a0p. 259<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After this we learn that the man isn\u2019t, 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\u2014these include what he thinks is the sea in front of him\u2014before 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.
\nThe next long section is a formative episode from the man\u2019s youth, when he got into difficulties in the sea while snorkelling and almost drowned\u2014all 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.
\nIn 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\u2019t a sea in front of him:<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.)\u00a0 p. 269<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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 \u201cwe made it.\u201d
\nThis story may appear to have a slight narrative arc but a plot synopsis isn\u2019t 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\u2019s an accomplished piece and, in terms of technique, atypical for the period.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+ (Good to Very Good). 4,950 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Make a Prison<\/strong><\/em> by Lawrence Block (Science Fiction Stories<\/em>, January 1959) gets off to a pretty good start with two Alteans discussing a prisoner\u2014the murderer of three of their kind, the first such crime in thirty generations\u2014who 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\u2014it just happens. I presume the twist might work for those who were assuming that the prisoner is a human.
\u2217<\/strong> (Mediocre). 1,000 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What Now, Little Man?<\/strong><\/em> by Mark Clifton (F&SF<\/em>, 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:<\/p>\n

[I] marveled, oh, for maybe the thousandth time, at the impossibility of communicating the goonie to anyone who hadn\u2019t seen them. The ancient Greek sculptors didn\u2019t 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\u2014grace 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\u2014well, because, that was a comparison never made on Libo. That comparison was one thing we couldn\u2019t tolerate. Definitely, then, neither human nor humanoid.\u00a0 pp. 276-277<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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 \u201cpet\u201d animals\u2014some of whom MacPherson has recently taught to read and write\u2014the 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 \u201cfrenzies\u201d among the rapidly increasing male population.
\nThe story eventually gets going when Tyler hires a goonie from MacPherson to do his reports for Hest, a recently arrived and troublesome official\u2014who 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.
\nAfter this exchange, MacPherson talks to Tyler in an effort to supress his revelation, but a businessman subsequently arrives at MacPherson\u2019s farm wanting to buy one of the goonies who can read and write; MacPherson refuses, but the business man later tricks McPherson\u2019s wife into giving him one for cash.
\nAfter MacPherson discovers what has happened he goes looking for his goonie, but ends up in Wellman\u2019s cottage:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy work here is about finished,\u201d she said, as she came over to her chair and sat down again. \u201cIt will do no harm to tell you why. You\u2019re 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.\u201d
\n\u201cWe?\u201d I asked.
\n\u201cI\u2019m a trouble-shooter for Company Personnel,\u201d she said.
\n\u201cAll this mumbo-jumbo,\u201d I said. \u201cGetting out there and whipping these boys up into frenzies . . .\u201d
\n\u201cYou know about medical inoculation, vaccination,\u201d she said. \u201cUnder proper controls, it can be psychologically applied. A little virus, a little fever, and from there on, most people are immune. Some aren\u2019t. With some, it goes into a full-stage disease. We don\u2019t know which is which without test. We have to test. Those who can\u2019t 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.\u201d
\n\u201cHest,\u201d I said.
\n\u201cHest is valuable,\u201d she said. \u201cHe thinks he is transferred often because we need him to set up procedures and routines. Actually it\u2019s 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.\u201d
\n\u201cHe doesn\u2019t catch on?\u201d I asked.
\n\u201cPeople get blinded by their own self-importance,\u201d she said. \u201cHe can\u2019t see beyond himself. And,\u201d she added, \u201cwe vary our techniques.\u00a0 p. 299<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story finally climaxes on Carson\u2019s 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:<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, no, you don\u2019t, Peter Blackburn!\u201d Miss Wellman snapped at him, as if he were four years old. \u201cYou come right back here and untie this poor goonie. Shame on you. You, too, Carl Hest. The very idea!\u201d
\nOne by one she called them by name, whipped them with phrases used on small children\u2014but never on grown men.
\nShe was a professional, she knew what she was doing. And she had been right in what she had told me\u2014if I\u2019d butted in, there might have been incalculable damage done.
\nForce 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.
\nBut 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\u2014and they became that, in their own eyes.\u00a0 pp. 305-306<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a philosophical postscript where MacPherson thinks about the goonies\u2019 intelligence and, after reflecting on their behaviour when hunted, concludes \u201cWhat is the point of survival if there is no purpose beyond survival.\u201d
\nIn conclusion, I found this an exceptionally clunky story full of unconvincing ideas and scenes (see the passage above) that don\u2019t 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\u2019m 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\u2019d add that it seems like another thinly disguised Analog<\/em> lecture dressed up as a story\u2014imagine my surprise when I found it was first printed in F&SF!<\/em> Is this a Campbell reject?)
\nAfter writing this review, it feels like this story should probably be rated as \u201cmediocre,\u201d but I see my notes say \u201caverage.\u201d Only just, I suspect.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 13,650 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

The non-fiction in the book isn\u2019t any better than the fiction. Judith Merril\u2019s Introduction <\/em><\/strong>is a lofty squib that discusses how the wonder of primitive man was slowly replaced by the rationality of science\u2014but is now loose again on Earth in the form of SF. Or something like that.
\nThe Story Introductions<\/em><\/strong> are initially fairly standard fare but it isn\u2019t 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<\/em>):<\/p>\n

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 \u201cOf Missing Persons\u201d as \u201can author who has yet to make his name.\u201d
\n\u201c\u2018Of Missing Persons,\u2019\u201d says Mr. Amis, \u201cis one of those things that offer themselves for analysis with an almost suspicious readiness.\u201d 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\u2014but 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.
\nFor the benefit of any readers who, like Mr. Amis, are unfamiliar with the author\u2019s work\u2014the name is Finney. Jack Finney. And it has been a familiar one in science-fantasy since Robert Heinlein\u2019s 1951 anthology, \u201cTomorrow the Stars,\u201d first offered it to the specialty field.\u00a0 p. 14<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is more of this in some of the other story introductions (in the Davidson she agrees with Amis about \u201cscience fiction\u201d no longer being a suitable term to describe the field; in the Bradbury she snipes \u201ceven Mr. Amis knows his name\u201d). Then Merril suffers another containment failure in the introduction to the Campbell essay:<\/p>\n

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\u2014and vigorous and enthusiastic\u2014guidance, ASF (which you can take as Astounding Science Fiction<\/em> or the new title. Analog Science Fact and<\/em>\u2014gasp\u2014Fiction<\/em>) has been the consistent leader in the field\u2014both as to sales and influence. Mr. A., however, limits his comments about Campbell\u2019s influence to a snidish remark about cranks whose rapid departure would benefit the whole field and a description of the editor as \u201ca deviant figure of marked ferocity.\u201d
\nI am here to say that I have talked with Campbell, literally and actually\u2014and lived to go back for more. (I don\u2019t 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. \u00a0p. 123<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This subject finally resurfaces in Merril\u2019s The Year\u2019s S-F, A Summary<\/em><\/strong> (where it should all have been in the first place) where she concludes by saying that she doesn\u2019t 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:<\/p>\n

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\u2014less than at any time since before the big boom of the early fifties\u2014since 1946, to be exact.
\nBut\u2014
\n<\/em>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\u2014but only twice as many magazines.
\nIt would be easy\u2014and gratifying\u2014to 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 \u201cscience fiction is maturing\u201d (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 \u201csuspended\u201d indefinitely without trying.\u00a0 p. 313-314<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She then adds:<\/p>\n

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\u2014but 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.
\nIn 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 \u201cslick,\u201d quality, and other non-s-f magazines. Last year more than that number was accounted for in the \u201cPlayboy-type\u201d 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\u2014equal 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.\u00a0 p. 314<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

For novels in the magazines: to Gordon Dickson\u2019s explosive \u201cDorsai!\u201d (Ast<\/em>, May-July), Everett E. Cole\u2019s \u201cThe
\nBest Made Plans,\u201d (Ast<\/em>, Nov.-Dee.); and the magazine version of Pat Frank\u2019s \u201cAlas, Babylon\u201d (Good Housekeeping<\/em>, March).
\nFor novels in book form: to Kurt Vonnegut\u2019s The Sirens of Titan<\/em> (Dell); John Brunner\u2019s Echo In the Skull<\/em> (Ace); and Theodore Sturgeon\u2019s Cosmic Rape<\/em> (Dell).\u00a0 p. 316<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are a couple of non-fiction essays in the middle of the book. The first of those is \u201cWhat Do You Mean … Human?<\/em><\/strong> by John W. Campbell, Jr., one of his editorials from Astounding <\/em>which\u00a0starts off well enough with Asimov\u2019s 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:<\/p>\n

I suspect one of the most repugnant aspects of Darwin\u2019s concept of evolution was\u2014not that we descended from monkeys\u2014but its implication that something was apt to descend from us! Something that wasn\u2019t human . . . and wasn\u2019t subhuman.
\nThe only perfect correlation is auto-correlation; \u201cI am exactly what I am.\u201d Any difference whatever makes the correlation less perfect.
\nThen if what I feel is human\u2014anything different is less perfectly correlated with humanness. Hence any entity not identical is more or less subhuman; there can\u2019t possibly be something more like me than I am.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I suspect that the objection to Darwin\u2019s work was that it suggested that we were an evolutionary accident rather than God\u2019s work and, possibly, that the world was more than 4,700 years old (or whatever).
\nAs to the \u201canything less perfectly correlated\u201d comment, that seems to imply that everyone\u2019s idea about what it is to be human is the same\u2014and I\u2019d also disagree that anything that isn\u2019t human is \u201csub-human\u201d.
\nBut I don\u2019t know why I\u2019m bothering with this, it\u2019s like fighting mist.
\nSierra Sam<\/em><\/strong> by Ralph Dighton appears to be a short piece about a company that manufactures an early type of crash test dummies.
\nThere are two very short poems, Hot Argument<\/em><\/strong> by Randall Garrett, and Me <\/em><\/strong>by Hilbert Schenck.
\nFinally, there is The Year\u2019s S-F, A Summary <\/em><\/strong>(see above) and Honorable Mentions<\/em><\/strong>. I\u2019m 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).<\/p>\n

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

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\u2014rather than going on a fishing expedition in the mainstream\u2014this 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.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. Alfred Bester (F&SF, February 1961<\/a><\/em>) thought the book was \u201can engaging collection,\u201d and noted the work by Damon Knight (\u201cbiting\u201d), Theodore Sturgeon (\u201cdreaming and heart-warming\u201d), Daniel Keyes (\u201csuperb\u201d), Leiber (\u201cdeadly\u201d), and Carol Emshwiller (\u201ca frightening study of decadence\u201d).
\nHe thought the anthology as a whole \u201ca most catholic and sophisticated collection, and a tribute to Miss Merril\u2019s taste,\u201d but he wished that, although writing story introductions is difficult, Merril \u201chad not solved the problem with a gossipy and personal approach.\u201d They were \u201cout of place,\u201d and \u201cintroduced a jarring note.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Carnell (New Worlds Science Fiction #101, December 1960<\/a><\/em>) begins by saying that this volume \u201cis even better than her previous four for 1956-1959.\u201d He then goes on to say that the last few volumes have ranged far and wide and:<\/p>\n

. . . 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.\u00a0 p. 127<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He then goes on to list the magazines that the stories were taken from before noting that, for the fifth year running, Science Fantasy<\/em> has a story included (J. G. Ballard\u2019s The Sound Sweep<\/em>).
\nCarnell concludes by saying that it would unfair to name his personal favourites but that readers should \u201cGet it.\u201d<\/p>\n

S. E. Cotts (Amazing Stories, March 1961<\/a><\/em>) says this volume is the \u201cbest yet,\u201d and that \u201cthere is a tremendous range in these stories. He adds that \u201cit seems to me that the real excitement and vitality in this volume stems more from the new names rather than the old pros,\u201d before going on to say:<\/p>\n

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 \u2018far out.\u2019 The exception to this is Simak\u2019s \u201cA Death in the House,\u201d a rich, warmly compassionate story of the type I praised so highly in his last book, reviewed recently.
\nThe most impressive of the debuts (or near-debuts) are \u201cFlowers for Algernon\u201d by Daniel Keyes [. . .], \u201cDay at the Beach\u201d by Carol Emshwiller, and \u201cThe Sound Sweep\u201d 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.\u00a0 p. 140<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He then goes on to deal with the material he didn\u2019t like, which includes the non-fiction (Campbell\u2019s editorial mostly) and poems (one of which he describes as \u201ccompletely sick and psycho\u201d). Cotts also has no time for Merril\u2019s \u201cconstant sniping remarks about Kingsley Amis,\u201d and states:<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.\u00a0 pp. 141-142<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

P. Schuyler Miller (Analog, March 1961<\/a><\/em>) notes that the series has been \u201ctaken over\u201d by Simon & Schuster, \u201cone of the world\u2019s top publishers,\u201d before speculating as to how the books are assembled:<\/p>\n

There is an ugly rumor afoot that every spring the year\u2019s best science fiction writers\u2014a different lot each year\u2014get 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\u2019s \u201cBest.\u201d 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.\u00a0 p. 154-155<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After this bit of fluff he spends the next page or so briefly commenting on all the contributions\u2014mostly one line descriptions with the odd adjective thrown in: \u201cwry,\u201d \u201csentimental,\u201d \u201cpoignant,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Austin Beeman (Science Fiction Short Story Reviews<\/a>) rates 5 of the stories as \u201cgreat,\u201d 12 as \u201cgood,\u201d and 3 as \u201caverage,\u201d and none as \u201cpoor.\u201d I wouldn\u2019t quibble with his choice of favourites, but he exhibits a greater tolerance of the chaff than me.<\/p>\n

2. In The Great SF Stories 21 (1959)<\/em>, edited by Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (which includes this story), the editors report on two further \u2018Pavro\u2019 stories by Jack Sharkey in Gent<\/em> magazine (which are not listed on ISFDB): Son of Multum in Parvo<\/em> and Son of Multum in Parvo Rides Again<\/em>.

3. The Wikipedia article on Feghoots<\/a>.<\/p>\n

4. Roger Price is a humourist who drew the famous Droodle<\/a> books. His Wikipedia page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

5. Will Mohler\u2019s Plentitude<\/em> reminded me a little, in places, of the novel Earth Abides<\/em> by George Stewart.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

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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 […]<\/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-13577","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\/p6Pcj7-3wZ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13577","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=13577"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13600,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13577\/revisions\/13600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}