Best SF: Science Fiction Stories

Best SF #1

by Edmund Crispin

This edition contains 9 of the original edition's 14 stories.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Short Stories

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of (Robert) Bruce Montgomery (1921-1978). His first crime novel and musical composition were both accepted for publication while he was still an undergraduate at Oxford. After a brief spell of teaching, he became a full-time writer and composer (particularly of film music. He wrote the music for six of the Carry On films. But he was also well known for his concert and church music). He also edited science fiction anthologies, and became a regular crime fiction reviewer for The Sunday Times. His friends included Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Agatha Christie.

He had always been a heavy drinker and, unfortunately, there was a long gap in his writing during a time when he was suffering from alcohol problems. Otherwise he enjoyed a quiet life (enlivened by music, reading, church-going and bridge) in Totnes, a quiet corner of Devon, where he resisted all attempts to develop or exploit the district, visiting London as little as possible. He moved to a new house he had built at Week, a hamlet near Dartington, in 1964, then, late in life, married his secretary Ann in 1976, just two years before he died from alcohol related problems. His music was composed using his real name, Bruce Montgomery.

source: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/philipg/...

Reviews

[Bionic Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this paperback for my boyfriend when it was first issued, and we both read it. We are both reading it again, so I decided to add this edition to the GR database, only to learn that it is incomplete! 4 stories did not make it from the hardback. It’s only taken 50 years to discover this … ah well!

Dormant—A. E. Van Vogt ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The story is set on a remote pacific island, after World War II. A US destroyer and its crew are there to find hidden caches of fuel left behind by the Japanese. An unusual life-form calling itself Iilah is also there, unknown to the crew.

Comprised of a huge rock, Iilah is actually a bomb, which has been dormant for countless aeons. Iilah has been reawakened by the radiation from the atomic bomb tests on Bikini Atoll in 1946, but Iilah has amnesia, and hopes to make contact with others like it. In an attempt to communicate, and to try find out where it can get more sources of atomic energy to revive it, Iilah hurls out seemingly random destructive radioactive blasts. These unwittingly cause a lot of destruction and kill people.

The humans decide to drop an atomic bomb, which ironically is exactly what Iilah needs. Iilah is reinvigorated by the flood of energy, and remembers its mission. It is a robot bomb, so it follows orders, explodes and knocks Earth out of its orbit and into the sun. Thus the world ends in 1948.

The writing felt rather dry to start with, but it is an ingenious premise. The life-form increasingly engaged my sympathy, and the action builds slowly to an unexpected and devastating climax.

Pictures Don’t Lie—Katherine MacLean ⭐⭐⭐⭐

“… Pictures, that is, that one can test and measure.
And these pictures positively, absolutely could not lie!”

Alien messages have been from Space, and the aliens seem human and friendly. Their videos make that clear, so they are directed to a landing spot on Earth. But something is wrong When the aliens land, they panic and say they are sinking into a huge lake. Here on Earth there is nothing to see at the landing site, so why can’t they see their spaceship? Nathan, the computer expert, has worked out why the aliens’ movements seem so jerky, and why their broadcasts are automatically slowed down. He says: “We’ll need a magnifying glass for that.”

The final sentence is a bitter revelation, and makes for a memorable story.

This story can be read here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51193...

Or Else—Henry Kuttner ⭐⭐

A visitor to Earth tries to persuade two poor Mexicans fighting over a water hole to make peace. Entertaining enough, but rather frivolous and hackneyed.

The Fire Balloons—Ray Bradbury ⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Fire exploded over summer night lawns. You saw sparkling faces of uncles and aunts. Skyrockets fell up in the brown shining eyes of cousins on the porch, and the cold charred sticks thumped down in dry meadows far away.”

So begins this beautifully written story by the master wordsmith Ray Bradbury. Two Episcopalian priests, Father Peregrine and Father Stone have been sent to Mars, to join the settlers there, and teach the gospel. The mayor of the community explains that there are two races of Martians; one is practically extinct and the other is not human. The older race are blue spheres, called the Fire Balloons. The priests make contact and Father Peregrine becomes convinced that the spheres are sentient and have a concept of sin; thus they have souls that can be saved.

The blue sphere prove to be an an ancient race, who were once human. Thousands of years ago were able to lose their bodies and took on the form of lightning and blue fire. Further, since they are without bodies, they have transcended past sin and do not require saving the way others would.

This is a thoughtful tale about the quest for spiritual redemption. It was first published in Ray Bradbury’s assembled novel “The Illustrated Man”.

The New Wine—John Christopher ⭐⭐⭐⭐

John Christopher, aka., Samuel Youd, is know for his ecological disaster fiction about dystopias and ruined earths, and this short story fits into this mould.

It begins with a couple about to part; a male and a female scientist musing over their respective inventions. Harl has a tube which entails time travel and Ellen is investigating telepathy. Her team is about to switch on a device which will alter the capabilities of the next generation: “What we are going to do is to change the human race in one sweep.” They know that Harl will not return to Earth during Ellen’s lifetime, so this is a sentimental goodbye.

What they do not know is that Harl will return to a deserted future earth. Humanity has virtually died out, unable to cope with others’ true thoughts, which are no longer filtered through social conventions. The sought after “improvement” to the human race has in fact destroyed it, through the meddling of Harl and Ellen and their teams.

This is a nice satisfying story, illustrating a trope of Sci Fi: that if scientific boundaries are pushed too far too quickly, it can lead to disaster.

Here is a description of a ravaged, deserted Detroit:

“As they went into the city, there were fewer trees, and grass grew only in patches. For quite large stretches the works of man still held an almost undisputed sway. But the houses were shuttered and empty. They advanced to the city centre, and then turned and back-tracked towards the ship.”

Prott—Margaret St. Clair ⭐⭐

“Prott” is a first contact story, about aliens who really do feel alien, with little to show they are sentient life forms except for an inexplicable interest in humans.

An unnamed academic has gone out beyond the asteroid belt to study the “Prott”, an alien race who live in space. They look roughly like poached eggs, although some have a net matrix around them. We learn of his frustrating effort to communicate with the aliens via telepathy, as he attempts to understand their language and sex life, but he finds the Prott’s incessant mind chatter increasingly unbearable.

Prott is told within a frame story. Two men are having drinks and one of them gives the other a diary to read—which is the academic’s story. It has a wryly ironic ending as we learn that the men are also plagued by the Protts’ thoughts, and have been pursued by them despite the academic’s best efforts.

The Ruum—Arthur Porges ⭐⭐⭐

An alien race has left a robot—a “Type H-9 Ruum”—on Earth during the age of the dinosaurs by visiting aliens, and never recovered because their ship had been destroyed in battle. Its job is to collect animal specimens. Millions of years later a uranium prospector, Jim Irwin, lands in a remote valley of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, all set to explore for three weeks. He see animal specimens and deduces that the Ruum has collected them. The animals include both modern and prehistoric mammals— even a small Stegosaurus. But the animals are all of a uniform size and not dead, but paralysed. Moreover they seem fully conscious; in a living death.

The Ruum decides to “collect” Jim, but Jim is fit, and trained for the military. Most of the story is description of chase and evade, with a neatly ironic ending It is clear that in the end the Rumm is no longer interested in adding Jim to its collection, as Jim has lost so much body weight in their various confrontations.

This story reminds me, oddly, of a dark version of WALL-E.

The Xi Effect—Philip Latham ⭐⭐⭐

This story was actually written by the astronomer Robert S. Richardson, writing as Philip Latham, and is a favourite in Sci Fi anthologies. It postulates a theory whereby galaxies will increasingly collapse and shrink, rather than recede as they normally do. The story acts out the possibilities.

The brilliant cosmologist, Dr. Karl Gustav Friedmann, theorises about a so-called “Xi Effect”, in which a vastly higher order of space-time called Xi-space has altered, causing slowly increasing effects on the local universe. Two astrophysicists, Stoddard and Arnold, observe erratic solar infra-red measurements, and discover that some wavelengths have disappeared. Many radio transmissions have also vanished from the airwaves.

They remember the cosmologist’s lecture which at the time seemed impossibly eccentric, and realise that this proves his theory. As time goes on, the shrinkage become measurable, and speeds up. Electromagnetic radiation is progressively eliminated and even colours begin to disappear. As darkness falls upon Earth there is total panic. .

The ending of this tale is gripping, and well told. However, it is an inevitable “one idea” story, and there are quite a few dated attitudes here. Fifteen years later, Heather Couper was to write to the popular British astronomer Patrick Moore, asking if she would be able to take up a career in astronomy, and received the reply “being a girl is no problem at all”. She went on to become the Astronomer Royal and was awarded a CBE. But the few females in this story are stereotypes of pulp fiction of this era.

A Case of Conscience—James Blish ⭐⭐⭐

This story is by far the longest in the collection; a novella, which won the Hugo Award. James Blish expanded it into a novel in 1958. The first part is the original novella from 1953, which is printed here.

In the far future of 2049, Father Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez of Peru, who is also a biologist and biochemist is sent to the planet Lithia to determine if it can be opened to human contact. Three other scientists also make up the team: Cleaver, a physicist, Michelis, a chemist, and Agronski, a geologist. We follow their experiences on the planet, and their interactions with Chtexa, a Lithian, who is bipedal and intelligent, and also reptile-like. The Lithians seem to have an ideal society, a sort of utopia with no crime, conflict, ignorance or want. Father Ramon is in awe.

The four scientists all give their testimonies, and each has their own ideas about what should happen to Lithia, but their ideas are wildly different because of their experiences. The team can come to no agreement.

Father Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez comes to the eventual conclusion that Lithia should be permanently quarantined. He now believes that Lithia is a temptation, and the work of Satan. He says that it is a place which has been deliberately constructed to show peace, logic, and understanding but with the complete absence of God. As they leave, Chtexa gives him a gift—a sealed jar containing an egg. It is Chtexa’s young, to be raised on Earth and to learn the ways of humans.

It is an unusual tale, and I suspect would resonate more with Catholics, although I admit to wanting to know more about what happens to the egg on Earth.

The book has a brief introduction by the editor Edmund Crispin, who went on to edit a series of at least 7 “Best SF” books. If anything, the selections seem to get better! This is the first time I knew of Edmund Crispin, although he was also a successful composer and crime novelist. He wrote a series of nine novels about Gervase Fen, an Oxford professor of English Language and Literature who has a penchant for private sleuthing. “Edmund Crispin” is a pseudonym of Bruce Montgomery. Under his own name, he composed vocal and choral music, plus numerous film scores for English comedies, such as six “Carry On” films. He was a man of many talents, and some of these Science Fiction stories he selected are true classics.

The original hardback edition of the book also contains these stories:

Dumb Martian—John Wyndham
No Woman Born—C. L. Moore
A Present from Joe—Eric Frank Russell
The Cerebrative Psittacoid—H. Nearing, Jr.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I have a problem with modern SF – it’s exhausting. Every short story & novella seems to think it has to build itself another weird ultra-high-tech future and throw the reader into the middle of it and also into the middle of another complicated plot. Things were much simpler in the 1950s. One time machine, one FTL ship, one robot, one girl. In this 1958 volume I liked two stories, Philip Latham’s “The XI Effect” where he takes on the end of the entire universe (it’s announced in a series of public meetings!) and John Christopher’s “The New Wine” in which scientists find out how to make human beings telepathic (“controlled gamma radiation” if you hadn’t guessed) so, over a few drinks with their mates, they benignly decide to irradiate the entire earth and make every new born child telepathic. Because to do it piecemeal will be dangerous, don’t you see? There would be jealousy and wars. But with their bold plan "the world will go forward in one giant’s stride." Now that’s what I call science! Bring it on! However during the next 100 years humanity dies out almost completely. One survivor explains it :

“The telepathy killed them, of course. Bound to. Some shot themselves or hanged themselves or whatever but most just died.”

“But why?” (asks a returning spaceman – he’s been away for a century and missed the fun).

“Because people have got bad minds. Why else? I guess you all know what you are like if you look at yourselves deep down and honest. Liars, cheats, murderers. I guess we’re all like that – always have been. What comes out of our mouths has been…through a filter I guess you might say. But there were no filters for the telepaths. “

I like the “just died”. I think internet is the modern version of universal telepathy, and John Christopher is quite right, what it reveals of the human mind is harrowing. We may all just die.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of mostly British science fiction. Faber were of course among the more left wing and alternative publishers, perhaps better known for authors like Lawrence Durrell, TS Eliot and William Golding. The stories dont quite reflect the more left wing writers but lack the often irritating optimism of contemporary American science fiction writers. There are no excitable brilliant scientists who save the word, but there are Jesuit priests who discover that earth based theology may not have any relevance to aliens, who may be strongly moral without a god. (James Blish A Case of Conscience). Ray Bradbury in Fire Balloons also looks at the same theme, but is a better writer by far. The Cerebrative Psittacoid is out of academic hell and amusing and John Wyndham The Dumb Martian is a subtle examination of racism and sexism, perhaps unusual for the 1950s. The writing in some is a bit ernest and ponderous-Blish needed a better editor, but overall a good sample of this type from the 1950s.

[Carol · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had such high expectations from this. Scifi is one of my favourite genres after fantasy, and I was hoping to find great new authors amongst this anthology. Instead I found stories that were mostly predictable, old, and with a whole lot of religion crammed into the tales. The only thing that I found from the stories was that there were tons of Martians, reptile races, and priests, which mostly screamed 60s in my head. I know those were the main themes, I've seen them before... And I don't mind the Martians and the reptiles so much, but the religion was too much.
The first story was the only one that surprised me. It was amazing, brilliant, and had quite the twist. I was hoping for stories like that, but all the rest. Well, let's just say I guessed at least half of them, which is not something that happens to me often with good scifi. There's lots of third type encounters, aliens meeting humans, most of the aliens being Martians, colonies in Mars, Mars was the hype back in the 60s so I kinda expected it. Most of the time, I was even rooting for the aliens to win to be honest.
The few stories about physics problems, while they were a bit hard on me, were actually interesting. A bit too techy-techy on occasions, but they presented interesting ideas with the universe and possible apocalyptic scenarios. There were others a bit more incomprehensible and confusing.
My problem was when I got to the 'let's send priests to Mars to save the souls of Martians and convert them to christianism' stories. I almost screamed. Really? Why?! I don't know you, but when I decide to pick up a scifi book, the last thing I expect to find is religion meddling into the story. I don't mind having the occasional religious astronaut and such, having thoughts of how insignificant they are while watching the universe from space, but with priests I have to draw a line. I expect stories about technology, alien races, encounters, wars, or even attempts at peace with the universe. I hate reading about damn priests shoving religion down alien throats. Because seriously, why would an alien race would allow for humans to come impose that on them? And why is it so utterly necessary for science to see if alien races are free of sin or not? This made my reading difficult.

[Tommy Verhaegen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een verzameling korte verhalen van een aantal groten uit de sci-fi wereld van lang geleden. De meeste van deze verhalen hebben de tand des tijds doorstaan, al behoren ze zeker niet altijd tot het beste werk van deze schrijvers. Je merkt ook duidelijk dat het genre zelf ondertussen heel wat evolutie heeft gekend, als gevolg voelt het allemaal toch een beetje ouderwets aan. Dat hoeft op zich natuurlijk geen probleem te zijn, kwaliteit blijft zijn waarde behouden en een beetje nostalgie kan geen kwaad.
Zoals gebruikelijk in dit soort samenstellingen is er een brede waaier van verhaallijnen en subgenres voorzien zodat eenieder er wel wat waardevols kan uithalen.
Het langste verhaal is dat van James Bliss, die ik vooral ken van de Star Trek franchise, en juist dat verhaal viel me nogal tegen. Het begint erg goed met de verkenning van een vreemde planeet met intelligente bewoners en een merkwaardige integratie met de natuur. Maar de plot wordt overschaduwd door politieke en godsdienstige redeneringen die wat de politiek betreft onaangenaam maar zeker geloofwaardig zijn, maar wat de godsdienst betreft niet alleen achterhaald zijn door de tijd, erg onwaarschijnlijk qua redenering en dan nog eens gebaseerd of verkeerde feiten.

[Gareth D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The individual stories are all very good, but are all very much of their time - in the 1950s it seems that only white males can be the main character in any SF story. I'm always amazed that, however imaginative a story is, the author's could not imagine women, or anyone who is not a white American, could possibly be any significant part of any of these stories.

I read the 1972 reprint, with a smaller selection of stories and with a new introduction from the editor. This introduction is even more astonishingly parochial than the stories, and limiting in what he defines a science fiction story is, or should be.

So a worthwhile read to experience the history of science fiction, but not essential by any means.

[Shelley Diamond · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting 1955 collection of nine sci-fi stories. I'd never heard of any of them before now, despite my history of reading lots of sci-fi stories. I wouldn't say they were THE BEST, but five of the nine were definitely worth reading. The five I recommend are: The Fire Balloons by Ray Bradbury, The New Wine by John Christopher, Prott by Margaret St. Clair, The Xi Effect by Philip Latham, and A Case of Conscience by James Blish.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A real mixed bag. Some true classics (including James Blish's Arthur C. Clarke-like "A Case of Conscience"), but also some true dross. Worth picking up for the one or two unheralded or forgotten gems.

[Nigel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable old school sci fi

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collection of science fiction short stories, originally published in 1955. Authors include John Wyndham, Ray Bradbury and James Blish.

I read a lot of fantasy, rather than science fiction, and I really enjoyed this look at the sci-fi genre of half a century ago. The stories range from adventure to humour to tragedy. Very enjoyable indeed.

[Plch]

actually, I have just realized that I did read Best SF 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 but not 1, since 2, 3 & 4 are not yet on GR this possibly will remind me to add them. (I read them more than 15 years ago so all what I remember is that they were all solid old style SF, I enjoyed the whole of them).

[Joseph McHale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn’t know what to think going into this SF collection - as i don’t read much SF. There were some great stories in here, brilliantly written, but others more so bland and boring, just fitting into a stereotypical narrative for the SF i have read.

[Sarah]

Read 14 story version