The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1958 The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Ninth Series Fiction, #124 Venture Science Fiction Yet More Penguin Science Fiction The Wooden Star The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus Null-P Alpha 4 Speculations Wondermakers 2 Histoires de fins du monde The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus Vuurwater Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-One Sermons to the Dead Beyond Armageddon: Survivors of the Megawar Immodest Proposals: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, Volume 1 Beyond Armageddon The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: 60th Anniversary Anthology
William Tenn is the pseudonym of Philip Klass. He was born in London on May 9, 1920, and emigrated to the United States with his parents before his second birthday. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York. After serving in the United States Army as a combat engineer in Europe, he held a job as a technical editor with an Air Force radar and radio laboratory and was employed by Bell Labs.
He began writing in 1945 and wrote academic articles, essays, two novels, and more than 60 short stories.
His first story, 'Alexander the Bait' was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1946. Stories like 'Down Among the Dead Men', 'The Liberation of Earth', and 'The Custodian' quickly established him as a fine, funny, and thoughtful satirist.
Tenn is best-known as a satirist, and by works such as "On Venus Have We Got a Rabbi" and "Of Men and Monsters."
His stories and articles were widely anthologized, a number of them in best-of-the-year collections. From 1966, he was a Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at The Pennsylvania State University, where he taught, among other things, a popular course on science fiction.
In 1999, he was honored as Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America at their annual Nebula Awards Banquet.
William Tenn - Eastward Ho! - 3 stars - There are far too many post-appocalypse stories. In this one, the Native Americans, Indians, end up taking back North America. Unfortunately, the story doesn't have any real content.
Arthur C. Clarke - Of Mind and Matter - 3 stars - Musing on artificial intelligence.
Charles G. Finney - The Black Retriever - 4 stars - A "supernatural" black dog causes problems in a neighborhood. Fairly well done.
Gerald Kersh - The Terribly Wild Flowers - 4 stars - A scientist introduces human insanity into plants, without making any attempt to isolate those plants from the outside world.
Fredric Brown - Unfortunately - 3 stars - A man lands on a planet with friendly aliens who will provide whatever he needs. Unfortunately, he needs to be able to correctly state what he actually wants.
Robert A. Heinlein - Have Space Suit---Will Travel (Conclusion) - 4 stars - The final portion of this story.
Wilbur Daniel Steele - The Bogey Man - 5 stars - Beware who you might meet after midnight on a golf course.
Damon Knight - The Night of Lies - 5 stars - Aliens attack and destroy all of humanity ... except for those still existing in a dream.
Alfred Bester - The Men Who Murdered Mohammed - 5 stars - A very unique view of the result of using time travel to attempt to modify history. Well written.
“Eastward Ho!” by William Tenn A snapshot of the closing moments of de-colonisation; a progressive future in which there is a gradual great reversal of colonisation of North America. It’s not until the very end that the reader “gets it!” “A century ago, before the whole world had gone smash in the last big war, his people had owned plenty of oil lamps themselves.” ***
5 • Eastward Ho! • 15 pages by William Tenn Good/OK. Jerry is an emissary of the United States, sent to New Jersey to work on a treaty with chief there. It turns out to be a Sioux rather than Seminole chief, but he goes on with his mission. The good news is the messenger isn't killed, but the shrinking nation that used to span a continent is being scrunched into less and less territory and the chief isn't going to give back New Jersey.
27 • The Black Retriever • 9 pages by Charles G. Finney Good/OK. The narrator's neighborhood is being pestered by an animal hopping over five foot garden walls, leaving dead birds, killing a cat, etc. The dog catcher is no use, he shoots someone's pet and makes a pass at Mrs. Betty. They set their own neighborhood watch.
36 • The Terribly Wild Flowers • 13 pages by Gerald Kersh OK/Fair. Dr. Huish is working on a cure for madness by infecting plants with madness from humans and then working a cure. The problem is the infected plants may reverse the process and infect animals. The language, phrasing and dialect make it hard to follow for little payoff from the plot.
49 • Unfortunately • 1 pages by Frederic Brown Fair. Play on words, I get the homophone, but without the wording of the original, I can't construe how his note was misinterpreted.
56 • Have Space Suit - Will Travel • 43 pages by Robert A. Heinlein Good/OK. Conclusion. Kip and Peewee have been taken to a court in the next galaxy over. The Wormfaces are on trial first. Their first claim is they don't accept the authority of this court, another that Earth was "uninhabited" by civilized beings. After that the humans are on trial. Whatever for? Well it's not Kip and Peewee as individuals, it's humanity in general.
99 • The Bogey Man • 15 pages by Wilbur Daniel Steele OK. Bronson goes out to scout some real estate, gets lost in the dark and ends up on a golf course. In the clubhouse he meet's Mr. Boogy. Then they start playing golf in the dark. First it's just a bet to see who can drive the ball further, but it turns into several holes. Supposedly this was to be who was going to fetch a doctor for the pale looking woman at the clubhouse. If Bronson was so worried, just go and get the doctor.
114 • The Night of Lies • 4 pages by Damon Knight Fair. Four friends are the last people on Earth, or are they already dead and just dreaming they're the last ones?
118 • The Men Who Murdered Mohammed • 11 pages by Alfred Bester OK. Good take on time travel, but needs a little work on character motivation. Mad professor comes home to see a guy making out with his wife. He decides to build a time machine and kill her ancestor. Seems a bit drastic, why not divorce? Or go back to the morning, give his wife some flowers and tell her he loves her.
An alternate future where the United States is being pushed further and further into the northeast by aggressive native american tribes. One such tribe, the Sioux, has just pushed past the Delaware river and a messenger is sent to it's leader, Makes Much Radiation, to inquire as to why they broke the treaty.
The story certainly slaps you in the face with the reversal of roles between whites and native americans but it was fun to read and always interesting to imagine a future where the power has shifted to a different group.