Charles G. Waugh

This little book collects fifteen short stories from across the 19th century, most of them being more science fiction than not. They originate from Britain, the United States, Germany, and France, though Britain and America dominate the book. Only four of the stories are pre-1850, since short sf really took off in the 1880s in the popular periodicals.

My favorite was probably the first, E. T. A. Hoffman's "The Sandman" (1817), about a boy who sees his father die working on an automaton, and show more grows up to be menaced by his co-inventor. It's dark and creepy, even now, in terms of what it postulates at the end. The funnest story is definitely Frank R. Stockton's "A Tale of Negative Gravity" (1884). Stockton also wrote some racist future-war fiction, but this a screwy comedy about a guy who can fly, and it's nice and fun. Guy de Maupassant's "The Horla" (1887) is another creepy tale, about an ancient race that might out-evolve humanity. (This was definitely a thing 19th-century folks were really worried about, between this and The Coming Race and Dracula and The War of the Worlds. I think it's all about imperialism.) Oh, and let's not forget Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844). That ending gets me every time.

Some of the stories are more noteworthy for what they do than how they do it. Not that they do it bad, but it will be done better later, and these versions only stand out because they did it first. Edward Page Mitchell's "The Clock That Went Backward" (1881) gives us a time travel story that features not only the first time machine (contrary to the British Library, who give that honor to an 1887 story), but also a predestination paradox. Wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey and all that! J.-H. Rosny aîné's "The Shapes" (1887) has some fantastic inorganic aliens that make the story alone. And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Great Keinplatz Experiment" (1894) is a fair-to-middling body swap comedy.

Then, of course, there's the blight of all science fiction: coming up with a good idea but not a good story: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's "The Mortal Immortal" (1834), featuring immortality, Edward Bellamy's "To Whom This May Come" (1888), featuring telepathy, H. G. Wells's "Into the Abyss" (1896), featuring an underwater civilization, and C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne's "The Lizard" (1898), featuring a man fighting a dinosaur, are all guilty of this to differing degrees, though most have a great "sense of wonder" moment regardless.

But even the not-so-great stories are still interesting reads. Good stuff if you're remotely interested in the history of sf-- early material like this isn't often reprinted. This is a genre being born, and everyone here is a visionary in their own right. show less

Robots in Judgment was editor Asimov's preferred title for this anthology since the stories cover more ground than just robot detectives.

Oh, there are robot detectives here all right. Asimov's famous human and robot detective team of Lije Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw are here for their only short story appearance, "Mirror Image." The murderous mobile law enforcer of Ron Goulart's "Into the Shop" captures the same criminal -- again and again. A robotic Sherlock Holmes, his Cockney-rhyming show more robot dog, and a Watson of mysterious origins investigate the case of a possibly mad industrialist on a future greenhouse Earth in Edward Wellen's "Voiceover".

Wellen also gives us an interesting, proto-cyberpunk story, "Finger of Fate", with its hard-boiled, if immobile, computer who prowls databases and public records to solve his cases. The machines of Harry Harrison's "Arm of the Law" and Harlan Ellison's and Ben Bova's "Brillo" are not exactly detectives but robot cops, and each must deal with police corruption and the difference between theoretical law enforcement and carrying a badge in the real world of humans. "Brillo" also deals with bluecollar fears of being replaced by machines. The tin stars of Larry Niven's famous "Cloak of Anarchy" supervise a Free Park where anything except physical violence goes -- until an artist decides to put his political ideas into effect and disable them. Stephen R. Donaldson's "Animal Lover" is a cyborg federal cop sent to investigate a hunting preserve with an oddly high body count of hunters.

Stories that don't feature robotic investigators and law enforcers are Christopher Anvil's tedious "The King's Legions", a tale of political machinations and a nearly-magical, sentient spaceship. Technological innovations since its original publication date of 1963 make Larry Eisenberg's "The Fastest Draw" a fully realistic story. In it, a man obsessively tries to make his fast draw competitions with a gunfighter simulcra more realistic. Harry Harrison's "The Powers of Observation" is a predictable but involving tale of espionage and androids in a Cold War Yugoslavia. "Faithfully Yours" by Lou Tabakow, about a convict fleeing some implacable retribution, is flawed by an irrelevant beginning and an ending that stops at the point where things get interesting. The strength of Donald Wismer's "Safe Harbor" is undercut by the rather unbelievable motivation of a central character who opts out of a world largely automated and administered with the help of "bugs", skull implants that monitor health and track their users in case they need emergency aid. Henry Slesar's "Examination Day" is famous but doesn't really work. Its surprise ending is probably there to make a satirical point but about what, exactly, is unclear.

Robert Sheckley's "The Cruel Equations", though, is a clever and funny story about an inflexible guard robot and the man who has forgotten his password but must pass by it -- or die on a desert world.

Not every story is perfect but, with the exception of Slesar's and Anvil's, they're all worth reading, and readers should, especially with the Wellen stories, find some overlooked gems here. show less

I've been trying to read through many anthologies this year - not doing the best job, but after coming off enjoying Revelations so much, I was excited to try another themed collection. An assortment of different stories featuring the devil through old folklore re-told tales blended with new ideas sounded like it would make sense to continue for the next book to keep the trend.

Usually anthologies put the best foot forward in the beginning, but that sadly wasn't the case here. I had to force show more myself to keep going with it. Mainly filled with parables tainted by dry humor or stories that embrace the cheesy aspects of the theme, the anthology starts offering its best when the first few stories are passed. There's a lot of tongue-in-cheek irony twists such as The Devil in Exile, The Cage (short but I liked this one), The tale of Ivan the Fool (despite it's reputation, I didn't enjoy it)

A notable exception is Robert Bloch's hellbent yarn centered around a young wanderer named Marvin who is obsessed with trains before he meets a special one that burns on sulphur and brimstone rather than fuel. The story is a nifty twist on waiting for the time to be happy instead of being happy in the here and now. Clever and well-written.

I'm Dangerous Tonight by Cornell Woolrich wasn't bad either, but it was too long for its content (about 90 pages). Rustle of Wings is one of the best stories; it's short and involves gambling. It has a quiet creepiness about it. Added Inducement was one of the slightly cheesy ones that worked. Americans and their TV and popcorn - tsk,tsk! The Devil and Daniel Webster was my third favorite - the ideal length when it shows a sought-after soul fight in court for the soul of a fellow countryman. It continues the common theme of people being foolish to sell their souls permanently for temporary profit. Rick Hautala takes the same common theme but runs with it in a creative way, making the whole thing sickly amusing in Colt 47.

There's a few gems hidden in the anthology but for the most part it's lukewarm. Not the temp you'd expect from this theme. It's not worth hunting down, but a few stories are worth picking up if you have it laying around nearby. show less

I picked this up at the used book store expecting a healthy dose of dated, sexist, adolescent fantasy-fullfillment tales, which would likely be more of historical interest than particularly compelling. I am happy to report that a majority of the ten novella and novelette length stories proved much better than that.

Most of these authors were already familiar to me. Of that group, I enjoyed both A.E. van Vogt's "The Weapon Shop" and A. Bertram Chandler's "Giant Killer" quite a bit more than show more works I read previously from these sources. I thought that, while Isaac Asimov's "The Big and the Little" works reasonably well as a stand alone story, it somehow works better in its more familiar place as a section of Foundation. I can't say that I particularly liked C.L. Moore's "No Woman Born," but it is astonishing to see a story from that era asking such probing questions about gender and identity and how men perceive women; I suspect it is the first feminist science fiction story. While "Killdozer!" may not be among Theodore Sturgeon's most probing stories, I'm not sure that any subsequent entry in the subgenre it spawned has topped it. Of the familiar authors, only Lester Del Rey and Jack Williamson's entries were in line with my fairly low expectations.

Of the Authors that were (more or less) new to me, I thought T.L. Sherred's "E for Effort" was quite good, Ross Rocklynne's "Time Wants a Skeleton" was better than it should have been, and Fredric Brown's "Daymare" was again in line with my low expectations.

So this anthology delivers both as a reminder of where the genre was 70 years ago, and as a source of some pretty darned compelling storytelling.

Sadly the book I purchased had a misprint which ruined two of the stories, but interlibrary loan supplied temporary access to a duplicate copy. Highly recommended. show less