What do you think?
Rate this book
Tomorrow: New Worlds of Science Fiction
Collection of science fiction stories edited by well-known anthologist and editor Roger Elwood. Included among these tales is the heart-rending story of Peter in Come See the Last Man Cry, J. Hunter Holly's novella of a future of which emotion is a quality no longer naturally endowed. There's also "Enchante" by Andrew J. Offutt, a charming twist on the old fairy tale about the princess and the frog. There are stories by Brian W. Aldiss and Alan E. Nourse, as well as others by younger writers. This is the first time that any of them have appeared in print.
- GenresScience Fiction
218 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1975
5 people want to read
About the author
Roger Elwood
184 books28 followersRoger Elwood was an American science fiction writer and editor, perhaps best known for having edited a large number of anthologies and collections for a variety of publishers in the early 1970s. Elwood was also the founding editor of Laser Books and, in more recent years, worked in the evangelical Christian market.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 25, 2022
What a surprisingly enjoyable anthology of stories this turned out to be! I acquired this nice hardback complete with virtually unblemished dustjacket from the used book market by post for under $10, shipping and tax included, because it contained an early Greg Bear story in it. Greg Bear passed away recently; I realized I had never gotten around to reading him; so, I have been recently trying to correct this deficiency. I could do what most people would probably do and just buy the collection of his complete short stories in order to read them. But the original publication this particular short story appeared in intrigued me. I therefore decided to take a less traveled road and picked that up instead. Am I glad I did! There is no way to read most of the other stories in this anthology because most of them were printed here, and only here, and have now fifty years later become long forgotten.
The first thing to know about the anthology is that it's edited by Roger Elwood. He was a very popular speculative fiction anthologist in the 1970s, belonging to the top five at minimum in an age known for these types of anthologies. Elwood came on in the late 1960s from seemingly nowhere, but was gone as an anthologist by the 1980s, back to a well-deserved obscurity if the interesting Wikipedia article on him is to be believed. Few readers today would recognize Elwood's name, much less read one of his books, unless they're really into SF short stories of this era. I made his acquaintance, readerly speaking, from the excellent collection of Andre Norton stories that he edited during the aforementioned decade. Consider me Elwood's one and only fan.
Not mentioned in that Wikipedia article, but well known from back in the day, was that one thing was guaranteed from an Elwood anthology. Namely, that roughly half the stories would be those of big-name writers, the other half would be from folks no one had ever heard of. Elwood was criticized back then for printing obscure authors. Personally, I consider it one of his charms. Besides, some of those authors no one had heard of then went on to become household names later. Greg Bear is a case in point. Whether the author was well known or not, that attribute made no impact on the quality of the story itself. You were equally as likely to read a jewel from some author you recognized, or not. That's certainly the case in this anthology.
There are ten speculative fiction stories included in this anthology. They range all over the place in terms of genre and style. I picture Elwood as having a pile of fifty or a hundred speculative fiction stories to choose from. From this pile he picked out perhaps ten that he really liked. These ten. He didn't worry about whose name was attached regarding who wrote them. He didn't worry about what genre critics would try to place them in. Fantasy, hard SF, it was all one and the same to Elwood. He just wanted to print ten good stories. In this I judge Elwood successful. I enjoyed all of them, too. All of the stories are originals as well, never before published, I should mention.
Okay, so what order to place them in. Some anthologists might choose chronology. When were the stories written? Early to mid-1970s, no doubt, all of them. So much for chronology then. How about genre? One could put the fantasy type pieces towards the front, finish off with the hard SF at the end. Or maybe go soft, social SF towards the front. Hard SF to the back. At first, that's what I thought Elwood did. But now, I don't think so. I then believed Elwood put them in order of how much he liked the ten finalists, best at the end, not as good at the beginning. That's certainly consistent with my ratings of the stories. The first three get my 3-star rating, the next four my 4-star, and the last three are frankly freaking amazingly great stories.
But upon further reflection I am not so sure Elwood used this method. There is another possible arrangement: order the stories based upon authorial voice. The first story is the least sophisticated, least mature or refined authorial voice, the last, the Greg Bear story incidentally, the most refined and sophisticated author writing voice. This voice is the most realistic, hard-core voice of the deepest thinker, whatever the genre or subject matter. This is the order I think Elwood arranges these stories in, and I agree with his assessment if so.
Enough preliminary. On to a brief review of the stories themselves, in the order they appeared:
1) "Come See the Last Man Cry" by J. Hunter Holly. We may have never heard of the author Elwood lists here as Joan Hunter Holly, but most of his 1975 audience certainly had. She wrote a number of very popular 1960s SF novels before succumbing to lung cancer at age 50 in 1982. (Smoking bad for you? Who knew?) This is one of the two novelettes in the anthology; the other eight are all short stories. And although it's okay, it is indeed my least favorite story in the collection. The premise is that the world population has become unable to experience emotion. The only way people can get their thrills is to find some borderline intellectually disabled child and manipulate his emotions in order to then experience them vicariously as a spectator through something like TV. Get the didactic message yet? And yes, the plot makes this much sense, and goes on some 65 pages this way with the subject trying to live his own life instead of being people's emotional Christ figure.
2) "Nize Kitty," is by Alan E. Nourse, another big SF author name Elwood's audience would have known better than we do today. I was once convinced he was a pseudonym for Andre Norton, or vice versa. They're not, of course, but they sure do write similarly on the same types of subjects. Here we have an entertaining story of secretly smart cats preparing their invasion of Earth. Good fun if one doesn't take it too seriously.
3) "The Kelly's Eye" by Robert Hoskins, a no-name author then and now. He wrote roughly ten SF novels in the 1970s under four different names. Good marketing move, that. The story is pretty decent, a post-apocalyptic tale of a man commissioned by parents to retrieve a teenage son that was captured by a tribe of barbarians. The protagonist is in the village trying to negotiate a ransom for the lad, who has his eye on one of the native girls and may not want to go, when some unexpected events take place.
The really good stories begin now:
4) "Arctic Rescue" by John Keith Mason. No one would recognize Mason's name today or then. He wrote eight short stories during his lifetime, five during WW II under the name John Hollis Mason, and three more in 1974-75, the last two under the Keith middle name. This is a first contact story. A lone alien crash lands in the Arctic to be rescued by an Inuit ice fisherman. The fascinating way this Inuit represents the people of Earth to the alien and the conclusions the alien draws make this a truly remarkable however short tale. I hope I can remember to seek out Mason's seven other stories. This story was told with such perceptiveness and sensitivity that I am sure Mason's others must be worth reading as well.
5) "Always Somebody There" by Brian W. Aldiss. Everyone knows this author name, then and now. Honestly, I'm surprised to find him in such an obscure anthology as this. This is high SF, if I may draw the corollary to high Fantasy, space opera and hard SF, presaging the work of the 1980s New Space Opera to be coming from England soon. It's only six pages long, about two beings who have been exploring so long they have transformed themselves into unrecognizable states and are now speculating on what they have learned as the end of time approaches.
6) "Death or Consequences" by Sonya Dorman or Sonya Dorman Hess if you prefer. Hardly anyone then or now has heard of her. The story is about a twentieth century woman, Sandra, who because she has leukemia puts herself to sleep as a Cryo, to be reawakened when a cure has been found. The conditions, place, and society she emerges into are the surprise. This story was told very realistically and excitingly purely from the reawakening woman's limited perspective. Amazing story that I won't provide spoilers to here. Maybe it deserves five stars. Sonya Dorman's other work is probably well worth seeking out. She wrote a couple dozen well-received short stories in the 1960s and '70s.
7) "Castle in the Stars" by Terry Carr. Everyone should know this name both then and now. Carr was a top SF anthologist. It's hard to believe he died more than 35 years ago now. What I didn't know was that he wrote a good number of short stories in the 1960s, and early 1970s, before pretty much giving that up to devote himself over fully to anthologizing. This story reads like an excerpt from a novel based on an episode from the 1960s TV show The Land of the Giants. A small spaceship crew is toodling around looking for signs of intelligent life on another planet (than Earth). What sets this story apart is its mature tone and sophistication. I wish I were reading more than this small nine-page fragment of what is obviously a longer work.
The amazing stories:
8) "Journey of the Soul" by Neil Shapiro. Wow! This story borrows a premise from Kubrik's 2001, A Space Odyssey. Betty Gray, a deposed and exiled empress who ruled over an interplanetary empire is done away with, her former subjects, now revolutionaries, sending her into a black hole aboard a shuttlecraft. Only instead of outright die she has an experience not unlike David Bowman's, emerging changed, yet in many ways the same. This amazing story, the second novelette of the anthology, is well told before and after the black hole. It is a highly original, unique, and completely authentic take on some really wonderful SF concepts about rebirth, what's possible, and what we retain. The characters Shapiro draws are so well-defined, vivid, compelling, and consistent, even the supporting character like the last loyal subject to lay down his life for the empress. I imagine few people have heard of Shapiro then or now. I had not previously. He was born in 1949 and presumably still lives. He wrote only in the 1970s, however: eleven short stories followed by two novels, after which he seems to have called quits to his writing career. What a shame!
9) "Enchante" by Andrew J. Offutt. I doubt many people today have heard of this author and not many in 1975 would have known his name either. He wrote mainly in the 1970s and 1980s, wrote a lot in fact, but was never a top-selling author. I know his work because I read a lot of the 1980s magazine titled simply Fantasy, in which he was frequently published. This is the best story I've read of his so far. It's a take on the old handsome prince turned into a toad by a witch's spell story. He just has to find a fair maiden to kiss him and break the spell. This is an amazing retelling, one I'll remember every time I hear the trope going forward, and that's all I have to say on it.
10) "Perihespiron" by Greg Bear. The story I bought this collection for. No one in 1975 would have heard of this author. It was the third short story he placed for publication, and here he was being given the pride of place, that position of last story, the final word, in an anthology, a completely deserved accolade. A spaceship with a number of settlers is making its way on an interplanetary voyage when it has an unfortunate encounter with another vessel that had a sole occupant, named Alista. Only one 12-year-old girl survives from the encounter between the ship and the invader; she had been overlooked previously. Then she meets the mass murderer on board what's left of her vessel and has a most interesting conversation with him. Greg Bear, who passed away recently, had this to say about death in this story: "Alista wasn't precisely a religious man, but his Kanaka heritage still impressed him with the idea that dignity and a certain courage in facing one's end led to better relations in the afterlife. Relations to what, he couldn't say--he'd long since stopped thinking about the states or deities beyond death. Death was merely the final solving of mysteries, one way or another." A perfect short story ending came after this. It served as the perfect ending to the anthology too.
The first thing to know about the anthology is that it's edited by Roger Elwood. He was a very popular speculative fiction anthologist in the 1970s, belonging to the top five at minimum in an age known for these types of anthologies. Elwood came on in the late 1960s from seemingly nowhere, but was gone as an anthologist by the 1980s, back to a well-deserved obscurity if the interesting Wikipedia article on him is to be believed. Few readers today would recognize Elwood's name, much less read one of his books, unless they're really into SF short stories of this era. I made his acquaintance, readerly speaking, from the excellent collection of Andre Norton stories that he edited during the aforementioned decade. Consider me Elwood's one and only fan.
Not mentioned in that Wikipedia article, but well known from back in the day, was that one thing was guaranteed from an Elwood anthology. Namely, that roughly half the stories would be those of big-name writers, the other half would be from folks no one had ever heard of. Elwood was criticized back then for printing obscure authors. Personally, I consider it one of his charms. Besides, some of those authors no one had heard of then went on to become household names later. Greg Bear is a case in point. Whether the author was well known or not, that attribute made no impact on the quality of the story itself. You were equally as likely to read a jewel from some author you recognized, or not. That's certainly the case in this anthology.
There are ten speculative fiction stories included in this anthology. They range all over the place in terms of genre and style. I picture Elwood as having a pile of fifty or a hundred speculative fiction stories to choose from. From this pile he picked out perhaps ten that he really liked. These ten. He didn't worry about whose name was attached regarding who wrote them. He didn't worry about what genre critics would try to place them in. Fantasy, hard SF, it was all one and the same to Elwood. He just wanted to print ten good stories. In this I judge Elwood successful. I enjoyed all of them, too. All of the stories are originals as well, never before published, I should mention.
Okay, so what order to place them in. Some anthologists might choose chronology. When were the stories written? Early to mid-1970s, no doubt, all of them. So much for chronology then. How about genre? One could put the fantasy type pieces towards the front, finish off with the hard SF at the end. Or maybe go soft, social SF towards the front. Hard SF to the back. At first, that's what I thought Elwood did. But now, I don't think so. I then believed Elwood put them in order of how much he liked the ten finalists, best at the end, not as good at the beginning. That's certainly consistent with my ratings of the stories. The first three get my 3-star rating, the next four my 4-star, and the last three are frankly freaking amazingly great stories.
But upon further reflection I am not so sure Elwood used this method. There is another possible arrangement: order the stories based upon authorial voice. The first story is the least sophisticated, least mature or refined authorial voice, the last, the Greg Bear story incidentally, the most refined and sophisticated author writing voice. This voice is the most realistic, hard-core voice of the deepest thinker, whatever the genre or subject matter. This is the order I think Elwood arranges these stories in, and I agree with his assessment if so.
Enough preliminary. On to a brief review of the stories themselves, in the order they appeared:
1) "Come See the Last Man Cry" by J. Hunter Holly. We may have never heard of the author Elwood lists here as Joan Hunter Holly, but most of his 1975 audience certainly had. She wrote a number of very popular 1960s SF novels before succumbing to lung cancer at age 50 in 1982. (Smoking bad for you? Who knew?) This is one of the two novelettes in the anthology; the other eight are all short stories. And although it's okay, it is indeed my least favorite story in the collection. The premise is that the world population has become unable to experience emotion. The only way people can get their thrills is to find some borderline intellectually disabled child and manipulate his emotions in order to then experience them vicariously as a spectator through something like TV. Get the didactic message yet? And yes, the plot makes this much sense, and goes on some 65 pages this way with the subject trying to live his own life instead of being people's emotional Christ figure.
2) "Nize Kitty," is by Alan E. Nourse, another big SF author name Elwood's audience would have known better than we do today. I was once convinced he was a pseudonym for Andre Norton, or vice versa. They're not, of course, but they sure do write similarly on the same types of subjects. Here we have an entertaining story of secretly smart cats preparing their invasion of Earth. Good fun if one doesn't take it too seriously.
3) "The Kelly's Eye" by Robert Hoskins, a no-name author then and now. He wrote roughly ten SF novels in the 1970s under four different names. Good marketing move, that. The story is pretty decent, a post-apocalyptic tale of a man commissioned by parents to retrieve a teenage son that was captured by a tribe of barbarians. The protagonist is in the village trying to negotiate a ransom for the lad, who has his eye on one of the native girls and may not want to go, when some unexpected events take place.
The really good stories begin now:
4) "Arctic Rescue" by John Keith Mason. No one would recognize Mason's name today or then. He wrote eight short stories during his lifetime, five during WW II under the name John Hollis Mason, and three more in 1974-75, the last two under the Keith middle name. This is a first contact story. A lone alien crash lands in the Arctic to be rescued by an Inuit ice fisherman. The fascinating way this Inuit represents the people of Earth to the alien and the conclusions the alien draws make this a truly remarkable however short tale. I hope I can remember to seek out Mason's seven other stories. This story was told with such perceptiveness and sensitivity that I am sure Mason's others must be worth reading as well.
5) "Always Somebody There" by Brian W. Aldiss. Everyone knows this author name, then and now. Honestly, I'm surprised to find him in such an obscure anthology as this. This is high SF, if I may draw the corollary to high Fantasy, space opera and hard SF, presaging the work of the 1980s New Space Opera to be coming from England soon. It's only six pages long, about two beings who have been exploring so long they have transformed themselves into unrecognizable states and are now speculating on what they have learned as the end of time approaches.
6) "Death or Consequences" by Sonya Dorman or Sonya Dorman Hess if you prefer. Hardly anyone then or now has heard of her. The story is about a twentieth century woman, Sandra, who because she has leukemia puts herself to sleep as a Cryo, to be reawakened when a cure has been found. The conditions, place, and society she emerges into are the surprise. This story was told very realistically and excitingly purely from the reawakening woman's limited perspective. Amazing story that I won't provide spoilers to here. Maybe it deserves five stars. Sonya Dorman's other work is probably well worth seeking out. She wrote a couple dozen well-received short stories in the 1960s and '70s.
7) "Castle in the Stars" by Terry Carr. Everyone should know this name both then and now. Carr was a top SF anthologist. It's hard to believe he died more than 35 years ago now. What I didn't know was that he wrote a good number of short stories in the 1960s, and early 1970s, before pretty much giving that up to devote himself over fully to anthologizing. This story reads like an excerpt from a novel based on an episode from the 1960s TV show The Land of the Giants. A small spaceship crew is toodling around looking for signs of intelligent life on another planet (than Earth). What sets this story apart is its mature tone and sophistication. I wish I were reading more than this small nine-page fragment of what is obviously a longer work.
The amazing stories:
8) "Journey of the Soul" by Neil Shapiro. Wow! This story borrows a premise from Kubrik's 2001, A Space Odyssey. Betty Gray, a deposed and exiled empress who ruled over an interplanetary empire is done away with, her former subjects, now revolutionaries, sending her into a black hole aboard a shuttlecraft. Only instead of outright die she has an experience not unlike David Bowman's, emerging changed, yet in many ways the same. This amazing story, the second novelette of the anthology, is well told before and after the black hole. It is a highly original, unique, and completely authentic take on some really wonderful SF concepts about rebirth, what's possible, and what we retain. The characters Shapiro draws are so well-defined, vivid, compelling, and consistent, even the supporting character like the last loyal subject to lay down his life for the empress. I imagine few people have heard of Shapiro then or now. I had not previously. He was born in 1949 and presumably still lives. He wrote only in the 1970s, however: eleven short stories followed by two novels, after which he seems to have called quits to his writing career. What a shame!
9) "Enchante" by Andrew J. Offutt. I doubt many people today have heard of this author and not many in 1975 would have known his name either. He wrote mainly in the 1970s and 1980s, wrote a lot in fact, but was never a top-selling author. I know his work because I read a lot of the 1980s magazine titled simply Fantasy, in which he was frequently published. This is the best story I've read of his so far. It's a take on the old handsome prince turned into a toad by a witch's spell story. He just has to find a fair maiden to kiss him and break the spell. This is an amazing retelling, one I'll remember every time I hear the trope going forward, and that's all I have to say on it.
10) "Perihespiron" by Greg Bear. The story I bought this collection for. No one in 1975 would have heard of this author. It was the third short story he placed for publication, and here he was being given the pride of place, that position of last story, the final word, in an anthology, a completely deserved accolade. A spaceship with a number of settlers is making its way on an interplanetary voyage when it has an unfortunate encounter with another vessel that had a sole occupant, named Alista. Only one 12-year-old girl survives from the encounter between the ship and the invader; she had been overlooked previously. Then she meets the mass murderer on board what's left of her vessel and has a most interesting conversation with him. Greg Bear, who passed away recently, had this to say about death in this story: "Alista wasn't precisely a religious man, but his Kanaka heritage still impressed him with the idea that dignity and a certain courage in facing one's end led to better relations in the afterlife. Relations to what, he couldn't say--he'd long since stopped thinking about the states or deities beyond death. Death was merely the final solving of mysteries, one way or another." A perfect short story ending came after this. It served as the perfect ending to the anthology too.
Displaying 1 of 1 review