Science Fiction Emphasis 1

by David Gerrold (Editor), Michael Bishop (Contributor), Joseph Pumilia (Contributor)

Includes eight stories:

Willowisp by Joseph Pumilia
Bonus Baby by Felix Gotschalk
Telepathos by Ronald Cain
In the Crowded Part of Heaven by Robert Borski
The Rubaiyat of Ambrose Bagley by W. Macfarlane
Gate-O by Don Picard
Shards of Divinity by Michael D. Toman
On the Streets of the Serpents by Michael Bishop

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies

211 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 12, 1974

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This anthology of original stories edited by Gerrold in 1974 was intended to be the first of a series, but the "#1" in the title proved to be overly optimistic, as this was the only volume to appear. His introduction stated that the goal was to present stories mature in concept and execution, as opposed to the space-opera fare that was most popular even then, a couple of years before Luke Skywalker was born. I thought many of the stories suffered from a sort of self-conscious attempt to be weighty and literary at the expense of entertainment, but I did enjoy the Joseph F. Pumilia and thought the best in the book was Michael Bishop's novella, On the Street of the Serpents. (I also loved the Dean Ellis cover painting.)

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Original anthologies tend to be a bit hit and miss and this is no exception. “Willowisp” is the opener from Joe Pumilia, where a footloose young widower wandering cross-country meets a young woman in a tumbledown shack near the woods. A strange light lures them into both a relationship and a mystery. Nicely written but spoilt a bit by a poor ending. Felix C. Gotschalk takes us into a future of controlled breeding and complete control over autonomic functions. How this affects relationships is the gist of “Bonus Baby”. Probably avant-garde in 1974. Kunst works in the synthetic medium of palparium, which enables emotions to be imprinted and re-emitted by and to observers using “Telepathos”. But it also allows that emotion to be rendered powerless to the artist and Kurst must rid himself of fear as he is dying. Interesting tale by Ronald Cain. With a mix of alien and human DNA the Alphas had better vision, more senses and longer lifespans. And they could interbreed with standard humans to improve the species. Denys Borzoi is rented by a wealthy recluse to improve her offspring but some emotions never change “In The Crowded Part Of Heaven” by Robert Borski. “The Rubaiyat Of Ambrose Bagley” is a typically wild and slipstream story from W. Macfarlane, where crack salesman Ambrose Bagley decides to spend a few months living the high life on a cargo ship from Hong Kong to Rio. Lessons are learned. Don Picard gives us a terrifying look into the future where the U.S. has been destroyed in WW3 and remnant refugees are in a ghetto (“Gate-O”) in Mexico. Parallels between the Jews in Poland are pretty obvious in the treatment of the ghetto inhabitants. Powerful. Michael D. Toman conflates the story of Jesus with a wild west hero and King Kong in “Shards Of Divinity”, but the longest story in the book belongs to Michael Bishop. “On The Street Of The Serpents” sees a man return to Seville in Spain after 30 years, on a mission to kill Chairman Mao who is on a visit with Franco. He finds that Mao now inhabits a nordic body after a brain transfer and must confront some people from his past in this alternate timeline. The book has its moments but ultimately it’s all pretty average.

[Gingaeru · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think I've read any of David Gerrold's work yet, but after this, I know not to trust his taste as an editor. He claims it took him nearly a year to select these stories out of over a hundred, and that he was looking for "quality, both in thought and execution." He also states, "the emphasis is on maturity... in idea and concept and storytelling ability." It was intended to be an annual series, but it's not at all surprising that there was never a #2.

"Willowisp" by Joseph F. Pumilia
4/10
It had a promising beginning, but ended up being too Texan for my taste. The characters' empty, copulation-based relationship was a letdown. The science fiction element went nowhere. Pointlessly disappointing.
-
Uses of "loom" (verb): 1
Characters "shrugged": 3
Hair "framed" her face: 1
...

"Bonus Baby" by Felix C. Gotschalk
1/10
This was everything I hate from the get-go. "Mature" my ass. It's nothing but a shallow cyborg sex tryst in a dystopian future. The text is crowded with made-up or over-abbreviated words, and the narrative shifts randomly between past and present tense. Rubbish.
-
Hair "framed" her face: 1
...

"Telepathos" by Ronald Cain
5/10
This is the only halfway decent tale here. And it does at least feel mature. It isn't poorly written, but I found it tiring.
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Uses of "loom" (verb): 2
Uses of "[this] here, [that] there": 1
Typo:
"... Kunst seemed to be only partially there, as if he were somewhere lese..." (else)
...

"In the Crowded Part of Heaven" by Robert Borski
4/10
Very recently, I read Starbreed by Martha deMey Clow (1970). I cannot help but feel that Robert Borski ripped certain, oddly specific, elements straight from her novel. Coincidence is suspect:
1.) The main character is a gold-skinned (presumably alien-human hybrid) male.
2.) His mother was a fourteen-year-old peasant girl.
3.) His goal is to reproduce as much as possible, in the hopes that his offspring improve upon humanity's genes, eugenics style.
4.) There are other children like him born around the same time, some of whom band together and attempt to blend in.
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The obvious sterility of the hybrids in Starbreed somehow came as a complete shock to them, despite their "superior" intellect. Unlike them, this guy is very fertile and aware of the inherent sterility of hybrids: "If we alphas had been true hybrids, we would have been sterile." So if not hybrids, what, in fact, are they? Anyway, the whole plot of this story is that the government forces these guys to make a contract with a human of the opposite sex, impregnate them, and move on to the next....
-
Characters "shrugged": 1
Typo:
"Which brings us back to the present and a smiliar situation." (similar)
-
Page 81 suffers from one of those rare typos where part of a random sentence will be missing and you'll find it thrown down somewhere lower on the page.
...

"The Rubaiyat of Ambrose Bagley" by W. Macfarlane
1/10
How could this have possibly been selected? Is it even science fiction? The writing is objectively bad. I wasn't aware of what was happening and had no notion as to who was speaking at any given time. All I was able to decipher is that there's a door-to-door salesman who goes on a pleasure cruise at some point. I didn't recognize a noticeable portion of the vocabulary (if it even exists).
-
Uses of "here and there": 1
Uses of "[this] here, [that] there": 2 on a single page! (p. 100)
...

"Gate-O" by Don Picard
4/10
After the U.S. is destroyed by nuclear war, the surviving American citizens living in Mexico are corralled in a walled-in ghetto. A fourteen-year-old American boy sneaks out one night for his first brothel visit. However, earlier that day, there was a political assassination, causing all the built-up resentment and hatred for the gringos to explode into a night of unbridled mob violence.
...

"Shards of Divinity" by Michael D. Toman
4/10
Jesus gets mashed up with various pop culture films/television programs, such as A Fistful of Dollars, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Mission: Impossible, and King Kong. I did not recognize all of them. This sort of thing is disrespectful, but I must admit, the Mission: Impossible bit caught me off guard and got a laugh out of me. So this author might have had some potential.
...

"On the Street of Serpents" or "The Assassination of Chairman Mao, as Effected by the Author in Seville, Spain, in the Spring of 1992, a Year of No Certain Historicity" by Michael Bishop
3/10
I don't know where to begin. This was very, very, odd. It's presented as a first-person account by the author himself and is broken up into three segments: past, present, and future. Is any part of the past portion actually autobiographical, or is it all fantasy? The occurrences in the "future" are too coincidental, convenient even, to be believed. You expect me to accept that all these characters from the "past" segment somehow happen to converge on this one Friday in Spain, where it all began? You just casually perform a successful assassination without elaborating as to your motives?! And you have no regrets because you "killed a monster"? (As history would have it, the real Mao never made it to 1992; he died just two years after the publication of this anthology, and not at the hands of some crazed writer.) It's like the author had a weird personal grudge against the guy and decided it was perfectly normal to publish his bizarre political murder fantasy as a story. It's one of the most random things I've ever encountered. It gave me Taxi Driver vibes (which happened to be released in 1976, the year of Mao's actual death).
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Another thing is the "name," Nisei, which is just the Japanese equivalent of "The Second" (II) or "Junior." It would come after a name; it itself isn't a name. The character "named" Nisei even acknowledges this, and she adds, "it's a generic term for a child born in America of immigrant Japanese parents." That is what it eventually became, yes.
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Uses of "loom": 2
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Typos:
"Upstairs from us there lived tlhe family of a Japanese-American airman..." (the)
-
"... on the rooftop aerie of out tenement..." (our)
-
"He remembled, Nisei told me, the... actor... who had worked in so many of Ingmar Bergman's films in the sixties." (resembled)
...

[Prospero · Rating 2 out of 5]

The editor of this collection is David Gerrold, not Michael Bishop.