New Writings in SF-21

New Writings in SF #21

by John Carnell (Editor), Keith Roberts (Contributor), Douglas R. Mason (Contributor)

Contents

• Keith Roberts. The Passing of the Dragons. 1972
• Douglas R. Mason. Algora One Six. 1972
• James White. Commuter. 1972
Why is the polite young man so interested in the old lady?
• Sydney J. Bounds. The Possessed. 1972
• Colin Kapp. What the Thunder Said. 1972
• H. A. Hargreaves. Tangled Web. 1972
• Michael G. Coney. The Tertiary Justification. 1972

Genres: Science Fiction

189 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 1, 1972

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

Reviews

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

A young man is arrested lurking around an elderly woman's flat and investigations reveal that he trades in postage stamps 60 years old and collects sheet music. Rumours that the old woman, (deserted after a year of marriage many years before), has come into money provides a motive for mischief, but the truth is much more unusual in James White's "Commuter". The thunderstorms on the planet Baba dwarf their Terran counter- parts and seem to attract enormous flocks of the large native avian species in Colin Kapp's "What The Thunder Said"...but have they confused cause and effect? Bronsil awakens in a pink womb-room and gradually, through external condition manipulation, is forced to take control of his surroundings and meet the Prell - an alien species who have taken some humans to help them explore space. But the human fighting spirit of exploration seems to have vanished in Michael G. Coney's "The Tertiary Justification". The other stories are mostly unmemorable and this volume is John Carnell's last.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

7 sci-fi short stories from 1972 which still read well today (2019). Especially so of the final story, ‘The Tertiary Justification’ by Michael G. Coney where a confused, naked man named Bronsil, with no recollection of anything apart from base human needs, must discover how to progress through a series of increasingly different, yet familiar, “rooms” and ultimately rediscover what it is to be human...

Other noteable stories were ‘What The Thunder Said’ by Colin Kapp, which I found interesting and read much like a mystery pulp at times; and ‘Commuter’ by James White, which has, what is now, a somewhat obvious twist (which may have been novel in 1972) but still was enjoyable to read.

I found one of the stories not to my liking, namely ‘Tangled Web’ by H.A. Hargreaves, but it wasn’t unbearable.

[Toby · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, the stories aren't very interesting, nor very well written.

1/5 The Passing of the Dragons - I guess it's a brave look at how unpleasant people can be, and the difficulties we may have in communicating with aliens, but it has a difficult staccato style of writing, and, overall, it's not very interesting.
2/5 Algora One Six - strangely difficult to read at beginning, unexplained fantasty in the middle, but an interesting idea about AI at the end
3/5 Commuter - I guessed the twist after the first few pages, but it was still charming
2/5 The Possessed - unfortunately the paragraphs depicting what's happening in the story are not well differentiated from the stories in the story, so the (quite interesting) ideas are muddled.
1/5 What the Thunder Said - not very interesting
1/5 Tangled Web - not very interesting
2/5 The Tertiary Justification - rather odd, but interesting.