(Original Review, 1980-09-11)

I tend to think in too cynical channels, and some comments sort of swept me back to the days when I found a Pocketbook (that's the trademarked name, not the generic) called NEW TALES OF SPACE AND TIME on the racks in our local US Import bookshop, plunked down my 2 escudos, and got COMPLETELY blown away on SF. Talk about sense of wonder, talk about the Golden Age--! It seems to me that what blew me away at the age of 11 was precisely what you were talking about. Since then I've forgiven a lot of wretched writing (even E. E. “Doc” Smith) if the SF only tickled that continuity/immortality fantasy. I wonder if kids growing up under the Cold War/Civil Defense Alerts/Tips for When the Bomb Falls pall were particularly susceptible to this SF promise that THERE WOULD BE A FUTURE, even if the future wasn't necessarily pretty.

I have recalled a Bester short story which bears on the topic of underlying fantasies. Bester's protagonist is crazy, and his fantasies take the form of trite science-fiction plots. In each situation, he is beset by some stock dilemma which he eventually overcomes by virtue of "a strange mutant strain" which allows him to triumph over the figure in his fantasy who represents the shrink trying to cure him. A large number such as 5,207,691 or close to it also figures in this. Damned if I can remember the title, but if you're interested in underlying fantasies, this story sure tells what Bester thought they are. It's also hilarious.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

[2018 EDIT: This review was written at the time as I was running my own personal BBS server. Much of the language of this and other reviews written in 1980 reflect a very particular kind of language: what I call now in retrospect a “BBS language”.] ( )

First published in 1951, this was something of a groundbreaking collection of stories. As Anthony Boucher points out in his introduction, until this book all the anthologies being published were collections of stories from magazines. The collections were being increasingly duplicative and he also thought that many of the stories being reprinted never should have been. Bottom scraping. This was the first of a new type with all original stories. It begins with stories by Bradbury and Asimov and ends with a true classic of the genre, one that stretched the boundaries a bit, the dystopian religious tale of "The Quest for Saint Aquin." These stories are clearly from an earlier era, but most are still quite enjoyable. This was a worthwhile collection to read, more for curiosity's sake, despite a couple stinkers.

The included stories are:

xi • Introduction (New Tales of Space and Time) • (1951) • essay by Anthony Boucher
1 • Here There Be Tygers • (1951) • shortstory by Ray Bradbury
16 • "In a Good Cause—" • (1951) • novelette by Isaac Asimov
44 • Tolliver's Travels • (1951) • novelette by Frank Fenton and Joseph Petracca
67 • Bettyann • (1951) • novelette by Kris Neville
113 • Little Anton • (1951) • novelette by Reginald Bretnor
143 • Status Quondam • (1951) • novelette by P. Schuyler Miller
170 • B + M - Planet 4 • (1951) • novelette by Gerald Heard
197 • You Can't Say That • (1951) • novelette by Cleve Cartmill
222 • Fulfillment • (1951) • novelette by A. E. van Vogt
253 • The Quest for Saint Aquin • (1951) • novelette by Anthony Boucher

Bradbury's opening story is kind of neat. It is an allegorical piece, an ecological tale, of a sentient planet like Eden. Remind yourself this was written in 1951. If you're like me a Star Trek episode from the 60's will probably come to mind. I've read this story before in one of Bradbury's collections, but it had been a pretty long time ago.

I'm lukewarm at best on Asimov's story. To me, this isn't one of his excellent ones, although it is interesting. There are many factions of humanity, not united. We view this as one faction idealistic, one faction practical, embodied by two men, friends in youth, that can't seem to unite against what is an alien common enemy. I never felt any tension in this story. At the end we are supposed to see that neither side was entirely right or wrong - both views were needed. Isn't politics almost always that way?

I was unfamiliar with the authors of "Tolliver's Travels." A wiki check reveals that Frank Fenton was a pretty successful screenwriter but only wrote a very few stories. Joseph Petracca was also a successful screenwriter with a number of stories. Science fiction pieces were not their usual territory. This is actually pretty good. A modestly successful but not wealthy man (a screenwriter of course) wants the world to be a better place. He is frustrated with society. He goes out for his weekly round of golf but his golf buddies have dumped him and started early. He pairs up with this little older man who has been a member of the club for a while but not anyone's friend. He doesn't play "serious" golf so is a bit of an outcast. Sounds like a totally blah premise but the story is not blah. What happens may be a drunken dream after hitting the bar a little too hard or it may be something else entirely.

I've probably read a little Kris Neville in the past. "Bettyann" was a nice surprise. It was apparently later updated and expanded into a longer work, but this is the original novelette, almost novella length. An interesting story of an alien child left behind and raised as a human. A very good story that was one of my favorites in the collection.

"Little Anton" was an atrocious bit of punning and far worse. NOT funny. The less said the better.

I know P. Schuyler Miller from many years of book reviews for Analog magazine that I was grateful for as a teenager. An enormous help for figuring out what was the good stuff to be on the lookout for. Before and during those years (he died in 1974) however he was a popular science fiction writer of the Golden Age and I have read very little of his short story output. "Status Quondam" was an entertaining time travel piece about a man who daydreams about how great it would be to live in the Age of Pericles rather than the modern world of "Big Business, Big Government, Big War, and little men" as the intro to the story describes it. He gets his wish through the invention of an acquaintance and finds himself under the Aegean sun 2400 years earlier. This story from 1951 was one of the last he wrote before focusing on being a book reviewer. An enjoyable piece of historical fiction, although it stumbles badly towards the end.

"B + M - Planet 4" by Gerald Heard may have appeared nowhere else but in this anthology. I certainly hope so. The explanation for all those flying saucers is giant bees from another planet. Seriously. Heard may or may not have been a popular author in his time, although he wrote little science fiction. That's probably a good thing. He seems to be one of those out there on the edge authors. Wikipedia notes him as a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous so he must have not been all wacky. This story just seemed too silly for me to enjoy. The writing also hit me as awful and I could not slog through this to finish it. Yuck.

Cleve Cartmill's story "You Can't Say That" was an OK enough read. Post war dystopia with a twist. Felt incomplete and had no resolution. Better was finding out that this author was the guy behind "The Cartmill Affair" in WWII with his description of the atomic bomb. Rather fascinating. http://boingboing.net/2008/01/20/science-fiction-writ-3.html

I thought Van Vogt's "Fulfillment" was a very cool story about machine intelligence. I had no idea where it was going and wished this story was longer than it was. The story begins with a lone machine inhabiting the earth in the far future. It appears to be stranded there but suddenly an opportunity to escape presents itself. There's a cool twist to the story which I should have seen but did not. Van Vogt's stories are hit or miss with me and this was a hit. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1056310.html

I got this by mistake - thought I was ordering the famous 1946 anthology edited by Healy and J. Francis McComas, but in fact it is a 1951 followup edited by Healy alone. For all that, I was not too disappointed, at least given my expectations of an original sf anthology of the period; there are average quality stories by Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, AE van Vogt and a half dozen others who I haven't heard of, and the first publication of Anthony Boucher's classic "The Quest for Saint Aquin". Apart from that, the other one that really grabbed me was "Bettyann", by someone called Kris Neville whose work I don't think I otherwise know. It is the longest story in the book, about a Mid-American teenage girl who is forced to confront her own always half-suspected nature as an alien changeling; excellent, I thought. Is Neville's other stuff worth pursuing? ( )

One of the first paperback sf anthologies.