Name: Supertanks
Rating: 3.44 (8 reviews)
ISBN: 9780441791064

2 reviews

July 18, 2021

I picked up this book because it contains a story by George R. R. Martin that hasn’t been published in any other collection or anthology. It turns out that wasn’t the strongest story in what is a somewhat mediocre anthology. I’ll give a short review and star rating for each story, in the order that they’re in in the book. I went into this knowing none of the authors except GRRM, and two of his Wild Cards co-authors, Stephen Leigh and Roger Zelazny, although Wild Cards is all I’ve read by the latter two.

The HORARS of War by Gene Wolfe - 3.5

A strong start. This story follows a war correspondent who underwent surgery in order to go undercover to look like a HORAR, a “Homolog ORganism (Army Replacement Simulation)”, which is a bald and pale Westworld-esque synthetic human super soldier. The US has sent their HORARS, along with human officers and smart tanks called Pinocchios, to fight a against a jungle guerrilla force. This is an enjoyable story with a twist ending.

I Made You by Walter M. Miller, Jr - 2

A smart tank with a damaged friend-or-foe sensor patrols its staked out territory on the moon, killing friendlies when they’re sent out to decommission it because the war is over.

Encounter by Stephen Leigh - 3.5

Another story set after the war that created him, this one follows an enhanced human super soldier called Voll that is forced to live in exile because society during peacetime can’t bear him. Leigh is a Wild Cards alumnus (this story predates Wild Cards so I suppose that is a misnomer). I liked Leigh’s Wild Cards contributions, and I liked Voll’s story as well.

The Computer Cried Charge! by George R. R. Martin - 3

I was hoping for more from this story. It sets up an interesting world, with a war being fought on a completely inhospitable hellish planet. We follow the tanks planetside, and their officers in an orbital command station. This is well written, but there just isn’t much of a story to it.

Hangman by David Drake - 1.5

This one was pretty strange. The Dutch and French have colonized the stars, and their established colonies are now establishing their own, and they both go for a planet called Kobold. The colonists go to war, hiring French and Dutch mercenaries to come and fight, but the colonial powers intervene, and hire the same mercs to keep the peace. The mercs, however, are French and Dutch themselves, and have a stake in the game. The story follows one particular merc who is not Dutch, but is employed by the Dutch company called Hammer’s Slammers, and shows how he navigates pretending to keep the peace while actually goading the French mercs into breaking the peace and their contract. I did not enjoy it.

Field Test by Keith Laumer - 2.5

A series of documents and batches of dialogue that eventually come together to tell the story of a tank that should’ve been smart enough to know when to retreat, but chooses not to for the honor of his regiment, to the bafflement of its creators.

An Empty Gift by Steve Benson - 3.5

A sad Christmas story about a group of children trying to survive the winter in a nuclear post-apocalyptia. An unmanned, but not exactly smart, group of tanks are air dropped at the Canadian border to head south and mop up any and all survivors of the nuclear blasts. One tank happens upon the children, and takes aim. Thankfully, the tank has spent all of its ammunition killing cattle because it is unable to discern between enemies and animals. So the children climb into the southbound tank and ride it to escape the clutches of winter.

Tank by Francis E. Izzo - 1

Another strange story. A kid is a wiz at pinball and all of the other games at the arcade. He happens upon a new game called Tank, puts on the goggles, and it’s so lifelike that he’s actually bleeding after being hit during combat. However, a grenade tossed into the tank just puts out a flag saying “Game Over”. It seemed to be real, but it wasn’t? It’s very short, and completely unexplained.

The Tank and Its Wife by Arsen Darnay - 3

A comatose man is signed over to the army by his wife for an experimental, secret program. His mind is uploaded to command a tank. The tanks train for war during the day, and are given orgasmic dreams at night. One night, our tank doesn’t dream, and finds that he’s able to start his engine and leave. He goes home to his wife, who faints when he writes a love note to her on the lawn using his flamethrower (he cannot speak). The artillery comes out and attempts to take care of the escapee before the public finds out about their secret program.

Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny - 4

A great novella! Hell Tanner is given a pardon for his many crimes, on the condition that he can drive the cure to a plague stricken Boston from Los Angeles through Damnation Alley, which is what the rest of what’s left of the US is called after nuclear war destroys it. By far the best story in this anthology. Looking into it, I found that Zelazny later expanded it into a novel at the behest of his publisher so that it would be more viable for a movie deal. This was successful in the sense that a movie was made, but a review by Barry Malzberg stated “an interesting novella converted to an unfortunate novel,” and supposedly Zelazny agreed with the sentiment. Also of note, fellow Wild Cards author Walter Jon Williams wrote the novel Hardwired in homage to Damnation Alley, which in turn became the basis for the Cyberpunk table top RPG, which again in turn provided the basis for the recent and infamous video game Cybberpunk 2077. Small world!

grrm short-story-anthologies space-sci-fi

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Supertanks

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