Love 3000

by Greenberg (Editor)

Contents:

Harness, C. L. Child By Chronos
Lee, W. A Message From Charity
Scortia, T. N. When You Hear the Tone
Galouye, D. F. Share Alike
Banks, R. E. The Littlest People
MacDonald, J. D. Ring Around the Redhead
Sheckley, R. Human Man's Burden
McKenna, R. Home the Hard Way
Vinge, J. D. Tim Soldier

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

Reviews

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gotta love funky 50s scifi.

Child by Chronos (Harness) - Eh. Funky time travel. Mother/daughter shenanigans.
A Message from Charity (Lee) - A great concept. Sharing consciousness with a person suffering a witch trial? Very neat.
When You Hear the Tone (Scortia) - Eh. Timey-wimey phone calls. Easily skip this one.

Share Alike (Galouye) - Probably the best concept. Two people on separate levels of existence while sharing an apartment, the common level of existence? Very neat.
The Littlest People (Banks) - People selling themselves into servitude, being shrunken down for storage/transport. As a fan of tiny faeries making their way in a human-sized world, I kinda liked this one.
Ring Around the Redhead (Macdonald) - Another eh. Man finds quantum ring, brings future girl into our timeline. Easy skip.

Human Man's Burden (Sheckley) - Big eh. While I love stories of asteroid/planetoid colonization, I don't love the imagery of the robots. I know it was published in '56, but you could do literally anything else than mock the suffering and exploitation of human slavery.
Home the Hard Way (McKenna) - "I'm a man again." Skip.
Tin Soldier (Joan D. Vinge) - The only one written by a woman in this collection, and easily the best. The women were treated like humans, had actual characterization, and I loved the ideas. Prejudice and racism were excellently discussed. I loved Maris, the tin soldier. I loved his wants, his dreams, his relationship with Brandy. I loved Brandy. She had goals and dreams, unlike the other women in this collection. I loved her relationship with Maris. This was a perfectly smooth chaser to this collection.

[David Layton · Rating 4 out of 5]

From 1980 comes this interesting collection of science-fiction stories based on the theme of love (heterosexual). Story publication dates range from 1948-1974. For each story, the editors have provided a preview note. These you can skip since they say nothing of much value. The story quality ranges from readable to very good. On the merely readable end is John D. MacDonald's "Ring Around the Redhead," a fairly typical piece of sf fluff in which a lone tinkerer inventor of medium looks and "American" personality becomes the undying love interest of a gorgeous young woman from another planet centuries ahead in technology and sophistication. I guess this is the "love is blind" story. The best in my view is the last story, "Tin Soldier" by Joan D. Vinge, a clever retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale set in the far future when only woman can pilot space ships. The prose style kept reminding me of Ray Bradbury. Other stories of note are Charles L. Harness's "Child by Chronos," a bootstrap time loop tale that cleverly encapsulates and exaggerates the common mother-daughter struggle, Daniel F. Galouye's "Share Alike," a humorous pastiche of married life, and Robert Sheckley's "Human Man's Burden," a great satire of colonialism by one of the best satirists to work in the sf genre. The book is worth purchasing if you find it in a used book store or estate sale.