Universe 1

Universe #1

by Terry Carr (Editor), Alicia Austin (Illustrator)

Dennis Dobson Publishers, London (1975). Reprints the Ace Books 1971 paperback original. First and only hardcover edition; as such is collectible. First volume in this groundbreaking series of anthologies of original science fiction stories. Introduction by Terry Carr and these stories: "West Wind, Falling" by Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund; "Good News from the Vatican" by Robert Silverberg; "Jade Blue" by Edward Bryant; "Nor Limestone Islands" by R. A. Lafferty; "Time Exposures" by Wilson Tucker; "Mindship" by Gerard F. Conway; "Notes for a Novel About the First Ship Ever to Venus" by Barry N. Malzberg; "Poor Man, Beggar Man" by Joanna Russ; "The Romance of Dr. Tanner" by Ron Goulart; "The Human Side of the Village Monster" by Edward Bryant; "Mount Charity" by Edgar Pangborn; "All the Last Wars at Once" by George Alec Effinger.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies

249 pages, Hardcover

First published March 29, 1971

About the author

Carr was born in Grants Pass, Oregon. He attended the City College of San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley from 1954 to 1959.

Carr discovered science fiction fandom in 1949, where he became an enthusiastic publisher of fanzines, which later helped open his way into the commercial publishing world. (He was one of the two fans responsible for the hoax fan 'Carl Brandon' after whom the Carl Brandon Society takes its name.) Despite a long career as a science fiction professional, he continued to participate as a fan until his death. He was nominated five times for Hugos for Best Fanzine (1959–1961, 1967–1968), winning in 1959, was nominated three times for Best Fan Writer (1971–1973), winning in 1973, and was Fan Guest of Honor at ConFederation in 1986.

Though he published some fiction in the early 1960s, Carr concentrated on editing. He first worked at Ace Books, establishing the Ace Science Fiction Specials series which published, among other novels, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin and Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin.

After conflicts with Ace head Donald A. Wollheim, he worked as a freelancer. He edited an original story anthology series called Universe, and a popular series of The Best Science Fiction of the Year anthologies that ran from 1972 until his death in 1987. He also edited numerous one-off anthologies over the same time span. He was nominated for the Hugo for Best Editor thirteen times (1973–1975, 1977–1979, 1981–1987), winning twice (1985 and 1987). His win in 1985 was the first time a freelance editor had won.

Carr taught at the Clarion Workshop at Michigan State University in 1978, where his students included Richard Kadrey and Pat Murphy.

Reviews

[Graham P · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars. Average transitional SF that is occasionally seeded with brilliance, but otherwise remains a tepid brew that transcends little and barely leaves any residue. Not an outright slight against editor, Terry Carr, but this anthology feels candy-coated, pleasant at first but then steadying off into familiar territories of Vietnam-war-era SF. This is not a Brave New World but a rather placid one. It reads more like a workshop hazed over in cheaply bitter pot smoke.

West Wind Falling, Gregory Benford & Gordon Eklund.
A rather mundane yet crudely-envisioned take about the moral weight of killing your own. Rebellious settlers on an ice star plan to return to Earth, if Earth will allow them back. However this narrative has the political depths of a faucet leak, and proves that throwing in a little sex does not make it new wave.

Good News from the Vatican, Robert Silverberg.
Mr. Prolific, Silverberg, churns out a tale in bar-chatter form. At an Inn besides the Vatican, scholars wait to see if the first robot has been voted in as the pope. The premise is there, but in the end, it is just cynical rumination. Perhaps Disch and Sladek could have played this hand better with their unique and playful vitriol.

Jade Blue, Edward Bryant.
How can a story centered on a feline humanoid who breast feeds a human child be so mundane?

Nor Limestone Islands, R.A. Lafferty.
Floating stone islands appear above the American midwest. They're selling their stone on the cheap, but can the conservative landowners below take their offer? Mmm, probably not. There's an intriguing 'hippy vs. farmer' presence here, olde town America versus 'the other', in the form of slovenly & mystical counterculture kids. The usual Lafferty wonky-isms are at full speed. One of the better ones in this Universe.

Time Exposures, Wilson Tucker.
Reading like a plot from a Bob Shaw story infatuated with lenses (both ocular and of the camera), good old Wilson Tucker uses a device as the main star within this peculiar hardboiled narrative: a camera that can photograph time up to 12 hours in reverse. The murder-mystery premise is far more intriguing than the sleuthy resolution, which reads like a telegraphed pitch out of crime fiction 101. If Spillane wore a spacesuit, perhaps.

Mindship, Gerard Conway.
Premise, and premise only. The idea of a 'sensitive' mind-engineer is a great one. A 'cork' is a cerebral sponge of sorts, a medium whose job is to plug into the ship's crew mind-nest and allay the astronauts fears and panic as their ship travels into another universe. I wonder if Conway's novel (also called Mindship) makes this premise actually work.

Notes of a Novel About The First Ship Ever to Venus, Barry Malzberg.
Here lies the beginnings of his watermark novel, Beyond Apollo. Salty and thoroughly wise-ass, Malzberg likes fucking with his readers as much as he does kibbitzing about NASA and US Politics. The idea that the government pays millions to have a violinist play a live performance on a doomed ship is quite hilarious. Malzberg really is the profane jester of the SF canon. One of the better ones in the collection.

Poor Man, Beggar Man, Joanna Russ.
The usual playful and multi-colored writing from Russ is horribly absent in this historical ghost story, one set in Roman times. It seems as if all the sugar has been sucked out of her prose, and she's writing for a more conservative market. And why does Russ have to write her own commentary after the story's climax is beyond me. Do we really need to know why an author wrote this particular story? Simply, no. Really, it's not a bad tale, but it's definitely not a memorable one, especially for Joanna.

The Romance of Dr. Tanner, Ron Goulart.
On an idiosyncratic planet, a human writer pens propaganda soap-operas for a race of lizard people. Wife cheats on him, the government is crooked, same old shit. I notice Goulart gets a lot of critical guff on many reviews, and I'm afraid this doesn't help his cause. If you like your humor horribly outdated, then why not give it a roll.

The Human Side of the Village Monster, Edward Bryant.
Urban overpopulation, strict eugenics, food crisis, and pollution. All the ingredients are there for a socialist doomscribe, but hasn't this been done better before? Yes, it has. This is a common kind of tale in the early 1970s scene, and if you want to read one of the best, I suggest you read Kate Wilhelm's The Red Canary, a masterpiece of urban dread to be found in her magnificent collection, The Infinity Box.

Mount Charity, Edgar Pangborn.
The best of the collection. Writers like Pangborn and Clifford D. Simak get some flack about being too 'pure' and 'good-natured', free of the cynical chains of post Golden Age SF. While this story is the more conventional of the collection, it is also the best. A peregrine, an ape, a snake and a wolf are altered by some alien virus (or spore), and as a family unit, they timelessly travel through centuries documenting the advancement of mankind. Lyrical and bittersweet, I applaud this one for its simple elegiac approach. The literary equivalent of a homemade chicken pot pie on a Sunday afternoon.

All The Last Wars At Once, George Alec Effinger.
Public murder is approved for a 30-day trial period. Men kill the women. Women kill the men. Straight vs. Queer. Black vs. White. The Veterans vs. The Artists. You get the idea. Superficial transgressions play heavy in this tale, and while mired in its heavy-handedness (kind of like Norman Spinrad at his loudest), the ending in Times Square on New Year's Eve is near brilliant. What happens on the last day of the killing period is hauntingly grand guignol. A precursor to The Purge film series, and the bookend tale helps ease the pains of this rather stiff and lukewarm collection.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carr kicked off his original anthology series with a strong selection of stories. I enjoyed the always-quirky Ron Goulart, both of the Edward Bryant stories, the Wilson Tucker, a very good Edgar Pangborn... good stuff all around, and two I'd rank as classics, Robert Silverberg's Good News From the Vatican (a robot pope!) and what may well have been George Alec Effinger's finest story, All the Last Wars At Once. Each story is accompanied by a very nice Alicia Austin illustration.

[Ari Pérez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ratings:

** • West Wind, Falling • novelette by Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund
** • Good News from the Vatican • short story by Robert Silverberg (already read in Silverberg's Unfamiliar Territory)
*** • Jade Blue • short story by Edward Bryant
** • Nor Limestone Islands • short story by R. A. Lafferty
** • Time Exposures • novelette by Wilson Tucker
** • Mindship • short story by Gerard F. Conway
* • Notes for a Novel About the First Ship Ever to Venus • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
** • Poor Man, Beggar Man • novelette by Joanna Russ
* • The Romance of Dr. Tanner • short story by Ron Goulart
** • The Human Side of the Village Monster • short story by Edward Bryant
** • Mount Charity • novelette by Edgar Pangborn
*** • All the Last Wars at Once • short story by George Alec Effinger (read already before in Carr's The Best Science Fiction of the Year #1)

[Jim Mann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before I begin: on the rating. It may seem strange that I gave the book 5 out of 5 stars when the highest I gave any story was 4.5/5. But this is a case of the sum being more than the parts: an anthology with this many 4/5 or higher stories is impressive.

Damon Knight’s Orbit was the first of the new wave/post new wave anthology series to make a splash, though looking back on it, it was often hit or miss, especially after the first half dozen volumes or so. It’s best experienced by reading The Best of Orbit anthology. For me, though, the two anthology series most important when I started reading a lot of SF in the early 1970s were Universe and New Dimensions. I typically read them scattershot: I didn’t read an anthology start to finish but rather picked out stories, read them, months or even years later read other stories in the anthology, and so on. But I decided it was time to read a few start to finish, to see how the anthologies stand up as a complete volume.

Universe 1, edited by Terry Carr, is a great start to the series. It features 12 stories, most of which are quite good, and only one I didn’t really care for.

“West Wind, Falling” by Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund (4/5) – humans are living in a comet. As it returns from the trans-Plutonian depths of space, the Earth plans to evacuate the population back to Earth, their mission now complete, but some don’t want to go. A good SF story, with focus not just on the science but on the various political groups and interpersonal relations.

“Good News from the Vatican” by Robert Silverberg (4/5) – classic story of the first robot to be elected Pope.

“Jade Blue” by Edward Bryant (2/5) – this is the one story I didn’t like, but to be fair it might be better on re-read. It’s a confusing story, and hard to follow and to tell what’s real and what’s dream in parts.

“Nor Limestone Islands” by R.A. Lafferty (4/5) – limestone harvested from floating islands. Well, it’s a Lafferty story and while that’s what the story is sort of about the real joy is in the telling.

“The Exposures” by Wilson Tucker (4/5) – new technology allows for a photographer to take photographs of up to 12 hours or so in the past. It’s being used to investigate the murder of a young woman. My only complaint with this one is that the ending was a bit too easy to guess.

“Mindship” by Gerard F. Conway (3.5/5) -- the captain of a mindship must hire a new “cork,” the person who keeps the mindship and the crew sane during flight. Mostly effective, but it would have been more so if the ship itself were portrayed a bit more.

“Notes for a Novel About the First Ship ever to Venus” by Barry Malzberg (4/5) – really what it says – a short story told via a writer’s notes for the story. The technique is a strange one but it works here.

“Poor Man, Beggar Man” by Joanna Russ (4.5/5) – Alexander the Great, in a fit of drunken rage, killed his friend Cleitus the Black. In this story, Cleitus returns as ghost following Alexander around, eventually convincing him to turn back from India.

“The Romance of Doctor Tanner” by Ron Goulard (4/5) – on an alien planet, a man is writing propaganda soap operas (soap operas financed by the government that must include the messages the government wants) starring a pipe smoking lizard. As things go wrong in his life, the man keeps going to his lizard star for advice, but things don’t work out well.

“The Human Side of the Village Monster” by Edward Bryant (4/5) – a couple in a resource starved future where pregnancy is forbidden and meat is rare is befriended by a strange old neighbor who has bioengineered a new source of meat.

“Mount Charity” by Edgar Pangborn (4.5/5) – a peregrine, a wolf, and a primate have been changed by an alien spore (probably – that’s what they think) and have become very long lived and intelligent. They a befriended by an old human doctor at Mount Charity, and tell their story of how they are accumulating history to pass on to mankind.

“All the Last Wars at Once” by George Alec Effinger (3.5/5) – blacks and whites declare a thirty-day war on one another, and soon all other groups (women vs. men, Catholics vs. protestants, etc.) are also declaring war. In some ways it made me think of Fred Pohl’s somewhat exaggerated satires. It’s effective for what it is, though a tad heavy handed.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75/5 (Collated rating: Good)

Won the Locus 1972 Award for Best Original Anthology.

The Universe series of anthologies contained original SF that had not yet appeared in print. And, the inaugural volume Universe 1 (1971) ed. by Terry Carr certainly hit [...]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started reading this before I remembered that I was supposed to avoid anything edited by Terry Carr ever again. Whoops.

The second book in this anthology series is better than this. However, I think I'm going to pass on the rest of the series. There were just too many bad stories -- stories with plot holes, handicapped by the prevailing attitudes and prejudices of the times, things that real science has far outstripped the predictions made here, and the just plain dull proliferate.

The pen and ink illustrations, found before each story, were by Alicia Austin. She liked to do nudes, whenever possible.

Selections:

* "Introduction" by Our Editor. Yada yada.
* "West Wind, Falling" by Gregory Benford & Gordon Eklund. One starship mission is so long, that three generations go by, which leads to the inevitable in-fighting. Seems kinda embarrassing, since unmanned probes do good work, but sci-fi writers just assumed all space missions woukd be manned.
* "Good News From the Vatican" by Robert Silverberg. This story would win a Hugo. The good news is that the first robot Pope is elected. This is Carr's favorite story in this book. The illustration is particularly good.
* "Jade Blue" by Edward Bryant. Jade Blue is something called a catmother. There's a weird kid, cyberpunk (of sorts), mechanical birds, a pre-Starbucks thingy, shadow vampires (go figure), a machine that changes time and a huge helping of nonsense.
* "Nor Limestone Islands" by R. A. Lafferty. Speaking of nonsense ...
* "Time Exposures" by Wilson Tucker. This was written specifically for this anthology. I thought all of these stories weren't published before, but for some reason Carr felt obliged to piont this out in this story's introduction. It has two interesting concepts (a camera that takes pictures up to 14 hours in the past, and gun control) but ultimately is a sloppy whodunnit.
* "Mindship" by Gerald F. Conway. Seems like an early draft, although it has the interesting premise of a spaceship that runs on mind power. The copy on Internet Archive had an ad for the Science Fiction Book Club at a particularly awkward moment.
* "Notes for a Novel About the First Ship Ever to Venus" by Barry N. Malzberg. Um, close but no cigar.
* "Poor Man, Beggar Man" by Joanna Russ. This is a ghost story combined with an alternate history story about Alexander the Great. The result is a long, boring mess.
* "The Romance of Dr. Tanner" by Ron Goulart. This is set in the same universe as other Goulart stories -- just a different planet. This one is inhabited by lizard men, apes who steal cars for religious reasons, and invisible critters that eat synthetic fibers.
* "The Human Side of the Village Monster" by Edward Bryant. In a polluted future city where food and human breeding are strictly controlled, and crime everywhere, an old man taps into a new source of food.
* "Mount Charity" by Edgar Pangborn. Four aliens that took over animal bodies try to exist on Earth. Although it's nice to have animals be the focus, Pangborn assumes all animals are stupid, and that even aliens are more concerned about humans than even humans are.
* "All the Last Wars at Once" by George Allan Effinger. Our Editor notes in the story's introduction, that every faction of society battles others "in the stupidest way possible." And yet ... it's actually pretty good, with a surprisingly well-crafted final paragraph.

[Invadozer Misothorax Circular-thallus Popewaffensquat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alicia Austin should've been featured rather than some of these stories.

[Raj · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an anthology of science fiction short stories. It's supposed to be the first in the Universe series, although I don't know how long it lasted. To be honest, the stories were mostly utterly forgettable, apart from the excellent Mount Charity by Edgar Pangborn about three animals who became sentient and extremely long-lived about three thousand years ago.

[William · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only finished 3-4 stories and none of them really good. Sometimes its fun to read old Sci-fi to see what people thought about the future at that time, but not all books carry through time. Most stories didn't even have a point or perhaps it was just beyond me....

[Ed]

ISFDB 52838. OCLC 1948605.

[Ivan Sagesse · Rating 2 out of 5]

La única historia que me gustó fue la de "Cerro Caridad", ¿tal vez fue la traducción al español?