Science Fiction, Compact Edition: Stories and Contexts

by Heather Masri

Gain an introduction to the major works, authors, themes, and contexts of science fiction arranged chronologically around six central themes in Science Fiction, Compact Edition.

Genres: Science Fiction, School, Fiction, Short Stories, Speculative Fiction, Anthologies, Textbooks

816 pages, Paperback

First published December 19, 2008

Reviews

[Norman Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book meant to be used as a textbook in college classes. It contains a broad overview of science fiction from the 1800s through the early 2000s, with over 50 stories and novel excerpts. Most of the stories are considered classics, i.e., part of the canon of science fiction literature (the definition of which is somewhat up for debate, since the "canon" often excludes women, minority, and non-English writers). The introductions are informative. The book is designed to be read with the stories grouped by type (Aliens, Time Travel, etc.), but there are alternate groupings (such as by publishing dates) that can be used. There are also essays in each section that comment on the real world possibilities of the various ideas.

I read the majority of the stories and some of the essays, going by publication dates. I think I've previously read all of the novels that are excerpted. The following are some of the highlights.

"A Martian Odyssey" by Stanley G. Weinbaum (Wonder Stories, July 1934 - novelette)
4 Stars
The first crew to land on Mars encounters strange environments and stranger life forms. One of the crew crash lands his scouting plane and is rescued by an alien who superficially resembles an ostrich. Despite a language barrier, the two help each other trek across the Martian terrain to hopeful safety, while encountering benign and hostile company.

“The Weapon Shop” by A.E. van Vogt (Astounding, December 1942 - novelette) 2018 Retro-Hugo Award finalist
4 stars
One day a weapon shop suddenly appears in a bucolic little town in a country where guns are outlawed. When one of the citizens tries to find out where the shop came from and why it's there, he is subjected to some mind-bending experiences by the proprietors, ultimately learns how his revered leader is basically a fascist, and how guns might not be a bad thing after all. Van Vogt is definitely promoting a libertarian view: "The right to buy weapons is the right to be free." Nonetheless, it's a well told thought experiment.

“Mimsy Were the Borogoves” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as Lewis Padgett] (Astounding, February 1943 - novelette) 2019 Retro-Hugo Award winner
5 Stars
One of the best stories in the collection. It's a whimsical tale about what happens when present day humans find a trove of far-future children's toys that have been accidentally sent back in time. What could go wrong? Everything.

"Arena” by Fredric Brown (Astounding, June 1944 - novelette) 2020 Retro-Hugo Award finalist
3 Stars
This is a problem story popular in the pages of Astounding. A single human must find a way to defeat a single alien lest all of humanity be destroyed by another all-powerful alien. The two combatants are placed on a desolate beach surrounded by an impenetrable force field and separated by another force field. The problem is to find a way through the barrier and kill the other without weapons before dying of hunger and thirst. The plot of this story was adapted for an episode of the first season of Star Trek (the one where Kirk fights the alien Gorn).

"Vintage Season" by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner [as Lawrence O'Donnell] (Astounding, September 1946 - novelette)
5 Stars
In the introduction, the editor credits this story solely to Moore (and misspells Lawrence). It is likely more Moore than Kuttner, but who knows how much each really contributed? In any case, this is a remarkable story that pulls the rug out from under the complacency of readers feeling good after winning World War 2. It's a classic of time travel with a dark overtone.

"The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke (Star Science Fiction Stories, February 1953 - short story) 2004 Retro-Hugo Award winner
4 Stars
A Tibetan monastery contracts with a company to install and operate a computer to speed up their task of compiling the nine billion names of God. The final result is intended to usher in a new chapter of universal existence.

"Second Variety" by Philip K. Dick (Space Science Fiction, May 1953 - novelette) 2004 Retro-Hugo Award finalist
5 Stars
In a world where nuclear war has obliterated most of the Earth, intelligent machines evolve themselves into lifelike replicas of humans in order to infiltrate their bases and kill everyone. In classic Dick style, the paranoia of not knowing who is human and who is not makes for a tense and disturbing story.

“The Country of the Kind” by Damon Knight (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1956 - short story)
4 Stars
A disturbing look at a near future where humans no longer have destructive, antisocial, or aggressive behavior, but where a degenerate who retains those traits believes that without them, great art and creativity also cannot exist.

"All You Zombies …" by Robert A. Heinlein (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1959 - short story)
5 Stars
This classic story examines the paradoxes caused by time travel. The excellent film adaptation Predestination (2014) is based on the story.

“Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1959 - novelette) 1960 Hugo Award winner (The 1966 novel-length version won the Nebula Award and was a Hugo Award finalist.)
5 Stars
This is one of the most well known and popular sf stories of all time. It is a heartbreaking, emotional look at how society treats those with mental handicaps. Cliff Robertson received an Emmy nomination for the tv adaptation on the U.S. Steel Hour: "The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon" (2/22/1961) and went on to win an Oscar for his reprisal of the role in the feature film Charly (1968) that was a 1969 Hugo Award finalist.

""Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman" by Harlan Ellison (Galaxy Magazine, December 1965 - short story) 1966 Hugo Award winner and Nebula Award winner
5 Stars
In a dystopian future, time is strictly regulated by the Ticktockman. Being late is a crime. So when Everett C. Marm, aka Harlequin, engages in a whimsical rebellion against deadlines, the ensuing disruptions must be dealt with harshly. This satirical story, that stretches conventional writing style, is one of the most reprinted stories of all time.

"For a Breath I Tarry" by Roger Zelazny (New Worlds, March 1966 - novelette) 1967 Hugo Award finalist
4 Stars
In a post-apocalyptic Earth where humans have become extinct, their AI machines continue to monitor the world. One in particular wants to become human and spends hundreds of years assimilating as much human knowledge as possible. The machine's rival bets it can't be done. This is a clever take on creation myths.

“Driftglass” by Samuel R. Delany (If, June 1967 - short story) 1968 Nebula Award finalist
4 Stars
I imagine that if Hemingway wrote sf, it would look something like this. The sf element of this story, that people are surgically modified to swim in the ocean, could probably be removed and you would still have a compelling tale of fishermen and the dangerous lives they lead and how it impacts their friends and families.

“Baby, You Were Great!” by Kate Wilhelm (Orbit 2, June 1967 - short story) 1968 Nebula Award finalist
3 Stars
In this early look at virtual reality, actors are surgically equipped with sensors that transmit emotions to viewers with special receiving equipment. A female actor finds out that her creepy manager has secretly installed a special transmitter that continuously captures her actions and arranged for her to meet and fall in love with a man for the prurient tastes of the viewership.

“Vaster Than Empires and More Slow” by Ursula K. Le Guin (New Dimensions 1: Fourteen Original Science Fiction Stories, August 1971 - novelette) 1972 Hugo Award finalist
4 Stars
On an exploratory mission to a new planet, ten misfits have to cope not only with their own peccadilloes, but also with the mysterious new lifeforms they encounter, ostensibly non-sentient plants but ultimately something more. One of the crew, a “cured” autistic who retains hyper-sensitive empathy, bears the brunt of his crewmates' displeasure and the fear induced by the alien life.

“When It Changed” by Joanna Russ (Again, Dangerous Visions, March 1972 - short story) 1973 Nebula Award winner and Hugo Award finalist
3 Stars
I'm sure this was a radical piece of sf when it was first published, but this tale of an all-female planet being invaded by men seems dated by today's standards, which in a way is a good thing. Today's writers are free to write about diverse cultures of all kinds, thanks in large part to writers like Russ who first broke the unwritten rules concerning gender and sexuality.

“When We Went to See the End of the World” by Robert Silverberg (Universe 2, 1972 - short story) 1973 Nebula Award finalist and Hugo Award finalist
4 Stars
A group of clueless social climbers time travel to the end of the world, although for some reason each trip shows a different apocalypse. Meanwhile, in heavy-handed irony, their present time is slowly disintegrating from earthquakes, floods, crime, plagues, and other disasters.

"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" by James Tiptree, Jr. (New Dimensions 3, October 1973 - novelette) 1974 Hugo Award winner (novella) and Nebula Award finalist
4 Stars
Clearly bridging the gap between the new wave and cyberpunk movements, this cautionary tale is at once a satire of product placement advertising, a chilling look at how disenfranchised people are treated, and a parable about how viewers project their hopes and dreams onto tv “stars”.

“The Persistence of Vision” by John Varley (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1978 - novella) 1979 Hugo Award winner and Nebula Award winner
5 Stars
This is an amazing examination of the thought experiment: how would a colony of deaf-blind people live? There's not much science fiction here—it's set in an economic downturn in the “future” of the 1990s and there's just a tad of magic realism near the end—but there is a lot of emotional depth. There is also a bit of an ick-factor whereby a middle aged man has sex with a thirteen-year-old girl (although Varley never shied away from unconventional gender and sexual depictions) and it makes sense within the context of the story.

“Cassandra” by C. J. Cherryh (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1978 - short story) 1979 Hugo Award winner and Nebula Award finalist
3 Stars
An sf retelling of the Greek myth of a woman who could see the future but not be able to convince anyone of her predictions.

“Burning Chrome” by William Gibson (Omni, July 1982 - novelette) 1983 Nebula Award finalist
4 Stars
(For some reason, this anthology lists this story as being published in 1985.) This is one of the first cyberpunk stories, introducing terms such as cyberspace and matrix (but not hacker). At its heart this is a story about unrequited love, built around a society filled with outsiders and con artists.

“Blood Music” by Greg Bear (Analog, June 1983 - novelette) 1984 Hugo Award winner and Nebula Award winner (The 1985 novel-length version was a Nebula Award finalist and a Hugo Award finalist.)
5 Stars
This is a chilling story of biotechnology gone horribly wrong. If people distrust genetically modified food now, wait till they become terrified by trillions of microscopic cells in our bodies becoming sentient (at least until the cells take over the world).

“Bloodchild” by Octavia E. Butler (Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June 1984 - novelette) 1985 Hugo Award winner and Nebula Award winner
5 Stars
This is simultaneously a horror story and a love story, and not for the squeamish. Aliens use humans to incubate their eggs. Do the aliens actually care for the humans or just use them to breed? This is the central question, one that is answered in at least this one instance.

“The Lucky Strike” by Kim Stanley Robinson (Universe 14, June 1984 - novelette) 1985 Hugo Award finalist and Nebula Award finalist
4 Stars
This is an alternate history about the dropping of the first atomic bomb over Japan in World War 2. When the Enola Gay and the primary crew are destroyed in an accident, an unlikely bombardier must make the most important decision of his life. This is a good examination of the effects of war on those who must wage it.

“Kirinyaga” by Mike Resnick (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1988 - novelette) 1989 Hugo Award winner (short story) and Nebula Award finalist
3 Stars
On a space station that replicates a Kenyan ecosystem, a wise old witch doctor gets into trouble with the station administrators over his “barbaric” practices. This is a well written story, but without a clear conclusion it feels like an opening chapter of a much longer work (as indeed it was when collected in the book Kirinyaga (1998) with nine other stories set in the same location).

"At the Rialto" by Connie Willis (Omni, October 1989 - novelette) 1990 Nebula Award winner and Hugo Award finalist
5 Stars
Willis brilliantly creates a screwball comedy that is informed by the oddities of quantum physics. The dichotomies between the attendees at a physics conference and the physics they study creates a funhouse mirror by which reality warps into absurdity.

“Bears Discover Fire” by Terry Bisson (Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, August 1990 - short story) 1991 Hugo Award winner and Nebula Award winner
3 Stars
This is an odd little story that posits that wild bears somehow learn how to make and tend fires in lieu of hibernating. No explanation is really given, nor is there any extrapolation as to what this might do to human/bear relations going forward. There is a nicely sentimental subplot about an elderly woman's reaction to the bears and how it affects her son and grandson.

"Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang (Starlight 2, November 1998 - novella) 1999 Hugo Award finalist and 2000 Nebula Award winner
5 Stars
The basis for the film Arrival (2016). A story that upends linear thinking through an examination of alien linguistics. The aliens are truly alien, but not so much that we can't understand them. A nice examination of free will versus predestination. Can we remember the future?

“Slow Life” by Michael Swanwick (Analog, December 2002 - novelette) 2003 Hugo Award winner
4 Stars
An astronaut exploring Saturn's moon Titan discovers a unique form of sentient life living in its ocean. The implications of this discovery profoundly affect the astronaut's perceptions of her place in the universe.

[Dawn Ang · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm reading selected stories for a Science Fiction course. Excellent collection of SF short stories and excerpts. A wonderful introduction to the Science Fiction genre.

[Marie (find me on StoryGraph) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly a collection of short stories with minimal critical contexts. Not nearly as helpful for my thesis as I anticipated, but probably great if you want to read short stories.

[Ryan Roblez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll probably write a full review at some point.

[Ebenmaessiger · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Arena," by Fredric Brown (1944): 9.5
- well this is the best of the lot of the early ones, by a fairly wide margin. Genuinely a bit thrilling and inventive, even if it's main conceit has been used plenty since then, only a testament to its worth. Still, avoids most of the pitfalls of other older sff, namely the dialogue and wooden characterizations, or if they're there, they're momentarily subsumed enough underneath the main action as to not negatively impact the story. The prose is crisp and tight, and doesn't get bogged down in necessary description as to impede the forward momentum of the narrative. And the alien was done well, realistically other and menacing all the same.

"Mars is Heaven!" by Ray Bradbury (1948): 8
- I know this story -- there's an old Twilight Zone that is basically this story, and I have pretty vivid memories of watching it, from my parents bed on a Saturday afternoon most likely. It made quite an impression, in the way old genre stuff can on young minds [and the old is imperative too -- I think, somehow, that age matters and some alchemy happens with the black and white and the outdated methods of storytelling on a young mind; they understand stories and narratives, although this is different, this is foreign, and therefore it opens up an avenue towards deep impressionability]. Yet, reading it here, and even remembering the episode itself, I'm struck by how simultaneously clumsy and skillful the grisly denouement is rendered [story: astronauts on a mission to Mars are surprised, upon landing to see a replication of the Midwestern small-town ideal and, even more so, their dead relatives; they spend happy evenings with them only to realize, much too late, that they're actually Martian creatures, preying on their subconscious to lure them into a false sense of security before slaughtering them all]. We get the “realization” completely through the inner monologue of the captain, laying everything out for us. Yet, in the terse description of the captains fatal attempt to leave, Bradbury writes a with a palpable sense of dread and ominousness [as in the “brother’s” short, “but you're not thirsty” to the captains excuse for trying to leave].

"The Sandman," by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1816): 9
- Much more than a curio, I'd say. And much more than simply a piece of that non-English language genre-ish mass of literature that the English-language press and reading public seem so often perplexed by -- what is it? how do we categorize it? how in the world do we contextualize it against contemporaneous English-language lit -- this appears to me a valid complement to Frankenstein in terms of early thinking on AI, and, likely much more pertinently, in terms of engaging genre storytelling.

[Andrew Pixton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great textbook *gasp* that I got for a Diversity in Science Fiction Literature class at SLCC. It serves as a good prep anthology for entering into and studying the genre with an informed eye. Each short story and essay has an introduction on the author and why it was included. It moves chronologically, giving you a history of sci-fi, both hard and soft, with clips from classics like Wells's War of the Worlds and Shelley's Frankenstein. It also includes other foundational authors who're less well known such as Jules Verne, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and E. T. Hoffman and later major influences such as Asimov, Zamyatin, Heinlein, Le Guin, Zelazny, Dick, and Triptree Jr. I liked the addition of the early gothic stories, however difficult they were to get through. Some of the more recent ones that I loved were Capek's R.U.R., Liu's Algorithm's for Love, Zelazny's For a Breath I Tarry, Butler's Bloodchild, and... well many others that are too numerous to list. This 1200 page tome took a long time for me to finish.

What I loved most about this collection, which is common to sci-fi in general, is its intellectual depth. As a philosophy major and social activist, I pay a great deal of attention to theme. Not only did each story have a heavy theme but each section ends with critical essays on a given theme, many from my favorites like Sartre and de Beauvoir. You also have key works by Freud, Jung, Eliade, Gould, Kaku, Baudrillard, and other intellectual giants. This is why I like the umbrella term speculative fiction. It allows us to use science fiction, fantasy, and horror as metaphorical vehicles for deep, complex, and difficult ideas. It's been a revolutionary key to thinking outside my own box. It lets you view the world around you through a new lens not otherwise available.

[Mike Johnstone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal collection of superb, classic SF.

[Steven M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it for college and it really gave me a jumping off point for all modern science fiction. There were so many stories I immediately connected to modern books, movies, or TV shows.