Lester del Rey (1915–1993)

I had this as a kid and for a Year of Nostalgic Rereads, it was a no-brainier...once I stumbled across it again earlier this year. I had another copy of the same 1971 Scholastic edition from my childhood that I found at a Half Price Books but that's gone now. I'm pretty sure that this was the first book I read that involved time travel - I was 10 and don't recall another earlier written exposure. I was enamoured, though even my 10 year old eyes saw that Lester del Rey mixed up his timelines show more (I had another Scholastic book on dinosaurs and knew that Archaeopteryx did not live in the same period as T. Rex). But it was still cool.

Unexpected, as an adult reader, was this nugget of wisdom (emphasis mine):

“It’s what we see or think we see that’s crazy. Not truth. Not reality.”
“Uh-huh. Do you suppose we’ll ever really know?”
“I doubt it. Man keeps discovering truths — truth here — truth there. But always a truth. Never the truth. Do you get what I mean?”

A welcome depth in a children's book... show less

In 1978, Lester Del Rey assembled this volume of what he considered his choicest short fiction, characterizing the pieces as his "favorite children." Terry Brooks and Frederik Pohl contributed introductions, and Del Rey's own afterword replies to both of these and comments on each of the sixteen stories in the book. They are arranged in chronological order of first publication from 1938 to 1964.

They are mostly science fiction stories, although some lean to the fantastic, and a couple are show more just weird fiction with a contemporary setting. Some of the diction is a little antiquated in the earlier stories. For example, pretty much all spacecraft are "rockets," including unlikely interstellar ones. There are a lot of robot stories. But Del Rey was more interested in imagining than prognosticating, and the stories definitely reflect that choice.

The first story of the book is the one that Del Rey also claimed was his favorite. "Helen O'Loy" was pretty prescient for the early twentieth century, but strangely innocent now that we've started to see how perverse human-machine socialization can become. It's also an amusing tell that the preliminary human love interests don't even get proper names in the tale, whereas even the faulty domestic robot merits "Lena."

At least one of these stories I had read before, although I didn't realize it until the book's afterword. "The Day Is Done" was included in Asimov's multi-author anthology Where Do We Go from Here?, which I read on loan from my public library as a schoolkid. This story about the twilight of Neanderthaler humanity didn't make a big conscious impression on me back then, but I'm sure it prepared me to appreciate tales of atavistic resurgence like Williamson's Darker Than You Think and Lafferty's The Devil Is Dead. And it signals a recurring theme in the book of the demise of a species, usually humans.

The time travel story "And It Comes Out Here" was fun, but didn't seem like much of an improvement on Heinlein's much earlier "By His Bootstraps." I appreciated Del Rey's experimental use of the second person narrative voice and future tense, and I wished he had been persistent about it instead of relaxing into a more familiar style.

There is a notable vein of anti-racism running through stories involving aliens, like "The Wings of Night" and "Superstition." The latter story also does a great job of maintaining an enigma for the reader over the course of a longer tale, and like a number of others in the book it involves some poking at the reader's likely metaphysical suppositions, as well as straining those of the characters.

The story that takes the cake on the count of theological imagination is the longest in the book, and one which Del Rey claimed to have grown "from some of my own philosophy, instead of being pure story" (292). "For I Am a Jealous People" is a tale of a church minister while extraterrestrials are invading to exterminate humanity, and it has a couple of deft twists. This one was probably my favorite of the book. But it gets some competition from "The Seat of Judgment," a very capable piece of planetary romance in the vein of Leigh Brackett, and somewhat anticipating the ways that Frank Herbert would later speculate about religion in Dune.

The last story of the book, like the first, centers on a robot. Despite a significant difference in tone, "Vengeance Is Mine" reminded me a little bit of Bradbury's earlier "There Will Come Soft Rains," which similarly stood at the end of the old edition of The Martian Chronicles I read. It's not the only post-apocalyptic robot story of the the book, nor is it the only one to try to stand received values on their heads and see some benefit in error and ill intent. But that topical rhyming provides some satisfaction in having it as the closing piece of the collection. show less

This is THE book...the one that set me on a Year of Nostalgic Re-reads, and the one that prompted a nine-year old boy to declare unequivocally that Lester del Rey was the "best science fiction writer ever!" Okay, so he wasn't...but del Rey was a pretty savvy editor and publisher. I finally got this from openlibrary.org (they had some issues with their waiting list code), and thoroughly enjoyed reading it again after 43 years. Dated, and clearly aimed at a juvenile audience, del Rey snuck in show more a few elements of wisdom not lost on my young mind.

This is the first science fiction book I owned. My mother reminded me that "the librarian would almost always have you and her son read any of the science fiction books first to make sure they were all right." Strangely, despite my pretty good memory, I did not recall that. show less

3.5 stars This dip into the early sci-fi works of Lester Del Rey (Volume I of II) is more a curation
than a collection. As a collection it is kinda weak. Only a few of the stories really deliver
and a couple held so little interest for me that I kept hoping a bus could pick me up and
hurry me to the end of the story (DOUBLED IN BRASS, HABIT). As a curation, it is
much more interesting. Linking the stories is a de facto memoir of the author’s early
days and how he evolved as a writer. While his show more stories represent what sci-fi was like in
the 30’s and early 40’s, the memoir portions of the book give a feel for the publications
of the day. There is evident growth as the writer moves from the earlier stories to the
later ones with my favorite by far appearing 2nd from the end—MY NAME IS LEGION.
This story is so good that it hints at the possibilities of Science Fiction in a way that
nearly 80 years later it still gives me hope. It uses time travel in a fashion not entirely
dissimilar than the movie LOOPER one of my favorites in recent years. REINCARNATE
and THE SMALLEST GOD are also both good but are weakened by sentimentality
especially at the end. CARILLON OF SKULLS hints at some horror story telling but
softens to Fantasy a genre for which I often have little patience. This certainly succeeds
on the level of making me want to read Volume II but also informs me that I might want
to be a little selective in reading his works overall. show less