Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 4

Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories #4

by Isaac Asimov (Editor), Martin H. Greenberg (Editor)

7 • Introduction (The Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 4, 1942) • (1980) • essay by Martin H. Greenberg
11 • The Star Mouse • [Mitkey • 1] • (1942) • novelette by Fredric Brown
32 • The Wings of Night • (1942) • short story by Lester del Rey
50 • Cooperate - Or Else! • [Rull] • novelette by A. E. van Vogt (variant of Co-Operate - Or Else! 1942)
77 • Foundation • [Foundation (Original Stories) • 1] • (1942) • novelette by Isaac Asimov
110 • The Push of a Finger • (1942) • novella by Alfred Bester
150 • Asylum • (1942) • novella by A. E. van Vogt
205 • Proof • (1942) • short story by Hal Clement
222 • Nerves • (1942) • novella by Lester del Rey
295 • Barrier • (1942) • novella by Anthony Boucher
347 • The Twonky • (1942) • short story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
369 • QRM - Interplanetary • [Venus Equilateral] • (1942) • novelette by George O. Smith
403 • The Weapon Shop • [Weapon Shops of Isher] • (1942) • novelette by A. E. van Vogt
442 • Mimic • (1942) • short story by Donald A. Wollheim

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies, Fiction

448 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 7, 1980

About the author

Works of prolific Russian-American writer Isaac Asimov include popular explanations of scientific principles, The Foundation Trilogy (1951-1953), and other volumes of fiction.

Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.

Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).

People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.

Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.

Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...

Reviews

[Damiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mediafinale: 3,75/5 stelle

[Norman Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Star Mouse by Fredric Brown
Retro Hugo Award Finalist (Planet Stories, Spring 1942) 21pp. 3 stars
This is a humorous story about a mouse who is intellectually enhanced by a crazy German scientist who then uses the mouse for his space flight experiment. I suppose the attempt at conveying pidgin German was hilarious in 1942, but it's cringeworthy today.

The Wings of Night by Lester del Rey
(Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942) 18pp. 3 stars
A couple of astronauts crash land on the moon where they meet an alien, the last of its kind. The trio figure out how to help each other. Not a particularly memorable story.

Cooperate--Or Else! by A.E. van Vogt
(Astounding Science Fiction, April 1942) 27pp. 4 stars
A human and an antagonistic alien must team up to survive a hostile planet. This theme has been done many times since, but this early example is notable for its clear storytelling.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Retro Hugo Award Finalist (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1942) 33pp. 4 stars
The first of Asimov's Foundation stories about the science of predictive history, later collected in the first book of his landmark series. I'd give this 5 stars, but without the subsequent stories, it lacks a clear resolution.

The Push of a Finger by Alfred Bester
(Astounding Science Fiction, May 1942) 40pp. 3 stars
In the same issue of Astounding as Foundation was this story of a group who use mathematics to predict the future. But here, a reporter gains unauthorized access to the inner workings of the prognosticators and almost undoes their work. Bester has fun with this story, but ultimately it's fairly unremarkable.

Asylum by A.E. van Vogt
Retro Hugo Award Finalist (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1942) 55pp. 5 stars
Vampiric aliens kill a couple of humans in a utopian society that has eliminated murder. A newspaper reporter starts to investigate. What ensues is a tense cat and mouse game between the advanced intellects of the vampires and the human. The ending is surprising.

Proof by Hal Clement
Retro Hugo Award Finalist (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1942) 17pp. 4 stars
Clement is known as one of the best hard sf writers ever. In this, his first published story, he already shows the creativity for which he is known. The story posits aliens who live in the sun's atmosphere and can't quite grasp that other life forms could exist on a cold body such as Earth.

Nerves by Lester del Rey
Retro Hugo Award Finalist (Astounding Science Fiction, September 1942) 73pp. 5 stars
An atomic reactor accident challenges a medical team to its limit. The verisimilitude of both the nuclear and medical science makes this story very believable, despite some errors and incorrect extrapolations. But for 1942, this is an amazing piece of fiction that kept me on the edge of my seat.

Barrier by Anthony Boucher
(Astounding Science Fiction, September 1942) 52pp. 4 stars
This is an interesting time travel story, hypothesizing that a time barrier could be constructed to keep people from going past a certain date. Two competing groups of time travelers fight for control of the barrier.

The Twonky by Lewis Padgett (C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner)
Retro Hugo Award Finalist (Astounding Science Fiction, September 1942) 22pp. 4 stars
This is a silly story about an alien machine disguised as console radio. The machine causes its human owners no end of grief. It's a genuinely humorous escapade, but none too deep.

QRM-Interplanetary by George O. Smith
(Astounding Science Fiction, October 1942) 34pp. 4 stars
Although filled with hard science trappings, this is essentially an office politics story. A bean counter is put in charge of an engineering group, and since he doesn't understand the technology he makes mistake after mistake, causing equipment malfunctions and low employee morale (believable because it's so true).

The Weapon Shop by A.E. van Vogt
Retro Hugo Award Finalist (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942) 39pp. 4 stars
One day a weapon shop suddenly appears in a bucolic little town in a country where guns are outlawed. When one of the citizens tries to find out where the shop came from and why it's there, he is subjected to some mind-bending experiences by the proprietors, ultimately learns how his revered leader is basically a fascist, and how guns might not be a bad thing after all. Van Vogt is definitely promoting a libertarian view: "The right to buy weapons is the right to be free." Nonetheless, it's a well told thought experiment.

Mimic by Martin Pearson (Donald A. Wollheim)
Retro Hugo Award Finalist (Astonishing Stories, December 1942) 7pp. 4 stars
This is a creepy little tale about how an alien being is able to hide in plain sight by mimicking human form and behavior.

[Martin Hernandez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Siempre es divertido leer los viejos relatos de CF, es encantador ver la ingenuidad y, en algunos casos, la certera predicción del futuro. De este tomo guardo buenos recuerdos, aunque no recuerdo cuales fueron mis relatos favoritos. Los relatos incluidos en este libro son:

Coopera... ¡o prepárate! (Alfred E. van VOGT)
La presión de un dedo (Alfred BESTER)
Refugio (Alfred E. van VOGT)
El twonky (Catherine L. MOORE y Henry KUTTNER)
Mimetismo (Donald A. WOLLHEIM)
Híbrido (Leigh BRACKETT)
Ataque en la noche (Lawrence O'DONELL)
Exilio (Edmond HAMILTON)
Pesadilla diurna (Fredric BROWN)
El robot vanidoso (Lewis PADGETT)

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a celebration of A. E. Van Vogt, since most of this anthology consists of his stuff. Since I don't like him, I had a hard time with this book. Over half of the selections were novellas or novellettes, which I'm not a fan of. A really good one is a rare gem, since it's a difficult story length for most sci-fi writers to pull off.

So, why'd I bother reading this? It did contain selections I'd never read before. And I like Asimov's introductions. His intros often were better than the stories he was introducing. I'd also read three other books in the series, and thought I'd tackle another.

1940s sci-fi can be fun at times, because there was still hope for life on Venus, newspapers would never die, the most commonly used swear word was "nuts", atomic powered everything, and nothing was wrong with smoking. Unfortunately, this was not a fun anthology.

Selections:

* "Introduction" by Martin H. Greenberg. Besides the usual listing of major world events in 1942, there's a snide comment about Great Britain, and an apology for errors in books 2 and 3 of the series. Shut Out's win in the Kentucky Derby is described as "a major upset."
* "The Star Mouse" by Frederick Brown. A way too sweet, sweet story of scientist building a small spaceship, and sticking a house mouse in it. It may have intended to be a parody of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse, but it's not very funny. Brown didn't know much about mice. Mice don't like cheese very much, and will gladly eat meat.
* "The Wings of Night" by Lester del Rey. The best sci-fi looks at problems of the present. In this case, the problem is prejudice. One of our pair of Earthmen hates any non-humans, especially Martians. They make an emergency landing on the moon, and encounter the last moon man. He's part plant, part animal and longing to grow sprouts ... if he can find some damn copper.
* "Cooperate -- Or Else!" By A. E. Van Vogt. It might be the first buddy story in sci-fi ... sorta. It's an interesting concept, but executed very poorly. Important plot points are introduced in a haphazard way. WARNING: A snake gets killed in a gruesome way.
* "Foundation" by Isaac Asimov. This is the original short story that started the immensely popular Foundation series. Only Asimov gives an introduction this time.
* "The Push of a Finger" by Alfred Bester. Although Bester is one of my favorite sci-fi writers, this is one of the worst things he ever wrote. Good luck figuring it out.
* "Asylum" by A. E. Van Vogt. Space vampires. This overly complicated novella was about space vampires. Really, that's all you need to know. Skip, but not Asimov's intro, where he criticises this "classic" (albeit gently.)
* "Proof" by Hal Clement/Harry Clement Stubbs. Two aliens talk to each other. This is hard sci-fi with the emphasis on "hard." I had to give up on this one.
* "Nerves" by Lester del Rey. This novella is basically a really long MASH episode set in a nuclear power plant of the future. I'm no expert, but the science seems really dodgy here. After such a long story, the ending seems rushed. WARNING: Multiple references to experiments on dogs.
* "Barrier" by Anthony Boucher/William Anthony Parker White. This was also published under the title, "The Barrier." No matter what you call it, it's crap. Our Co-editors moan that it was a shame that Boucher wrote so infrequently, but it's a good thing he did. This time travel story makes little sense, is overly dependent on the reader being a linguist, and has an open ending.
* "The Twonky" by Lewis Padgett/Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore. It starts out funny, then goes horrible. That a robot from the future doesn't like Ravel's Bolero is no great shock, though.
* "QRM-Interplanetary" by George O. Smith. The first of the Venus Equilateral series. Very long, hard to follow novella about something happening on a satellite around Venus. Mostly, it's about inter-office politics. Asimov's intro is deliciously vicious.
* "The Weapons Shop" by A. E. Van Vogt. Although this novella is considered a classic, it's just a long, plodding screed on the second amendment. Van Vogt would incorporate this story into his novel The Weapon Shops of Isher, the first in a series. Asimov's short intro effectively skewers the story itself.
* "Mimic" by Donald A. Wollheim. Although best known as an editor, Wollheim was also a writer. This was an entertaining blend of sci-fi and horror, and one of the best stories in this anthology.

[Otis Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 4 is drop-kickin' you straight into the heavy-duty year of 1942! Brought to the public by Uncle Isaac and his sidekick Martin H. Greenberg back in 1980, this fourth volume takes a long gander at a year when the whole wide world was caught up in the madness of World War II. Down here on Earth, folks were rationing rubber and tin, but up in the pages of the sci-fi magazines, writers were creating whole new universes. This thick anthology wraps its paws around 13 stellar tales that prove the Golden Age wasn't just a flash in the pan—it was burning hotter than a charcoal kiln. This go-around features the absolute historical kickoff of one of the biggest space legends in history: Asimov’s very own novelette, "Foundation". This is the exact yarn that started his massive empire series, all about a brainy fella named Hari Seldon who uses a math trick called "psychohistory" to predict that the great galactic empire is fixin' to go belly up, so he sets up a secret colony of scholars to save humanity's skin. But the Good Doctor ain't the only horse in this race. A.E. van Vogt completely hogs the blanket by sneaking three whole stories into this one volume—including his famous alien-intrigue tale "Cooperate—Or Else!" and the legendary "The Weapon Shop"—while Donald A. Wollheim checks in with "Mimic," a downright spooky short story about a bug that grows up to look exactly like a man in a trench coat just so it can blend into the city crowds. You also get Lewis Padgett's hilarious but creepy tale "The Twonky," about a regular fella who buys a television set that turns out to be a living, bossy alien machine that tries to run his entire life for him! As always, Isaac and Martin kick things off with a dandy introduction where they chin-wag about what was going on in the "real world" back in '42—from sports trivia to how much a loaf of bread cost—before diving into the "true reality" of the sci-fi scene. Some of the technological guesswork looks a mite funny today, but the sheer storytelling grit in here has got more muscle than a prize-winning ox.

[Alessandro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Le mie storie preferite sono state:
- "Barriera" di Anthony Boucher
- "Il Negozio d'Armi" di A.E. van Vogt
- "Mimesi" di Donald A. Wollheim
- "Il Topo Stellare" di Fredric Brown
- "QRM Interplanetario" di George O. Smith

Da notare che "Barriera" è uno dei rarissimi casi di storia in cui il protagonista è un linguista, scusate se è poco.

[Xabi1990 · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10. Recopilacion de relatos de estos años por los monstruos de la época

[Marko]

I have the german edition.

[matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

secondo libro che leggo di asimov, anche questo per nulla male, mi sono piaciute varie storie, soprattutto QRM interplanetario, il twonky e il topo stellare, questo tipo di racconti bellissimi

[Jon]

Contains the following 1943 Retro Hugo Finalists in various short fiction categories:

"Mimic” by Martin Pearson (Donald A. Wollheim) (Astonishing Stories, December 1942) - Read 4/28/2018; Liked the story but it bordered on horror. I'm not a fan of bug stories. (3-3.5 stars)
“Proof” by Hal Clement (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1942) - Read 4/27-28/2018; Liked this story of fiery first contact. (3.5-4 stars)
“The Star Mouse” by Fredric Brown (Planet Stories, Spring 1942) - Read week of 4/23/2018; Cute, delightful, poignant first contact story of mice and men and tiny aliens. (3.5 stars)

* The rest of the finalists I've already read in other anthologies *

“The Twonky” by C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner (Astounding Science Fiction, September 1942)
“Foundation” by Isaac Asimov (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1942)
“The Weapon Shop” by A.E. van Vogt (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942)
“Nerves” by Lester del Rey (Astounding Science Fiction, September 1942)

[Mmonchi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una recopilación de este tipo siempre tiene la calidad asegurada y esta no iba a ser menos. Se lee bien porque son relatos interesantes y bien escritos, con su dosis de ingenuidad de la época. Se trata de escritores que están aprendiendo lo que quieren hacer y exploran los límites de la ciencia ficción que conocen.
Echo en falta algún relato que destaque sobre el resto, algo especial.

[Old Man Aries · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il 1942 è l’anno dei racconti di fantascienza inclusi in questo quarto volume della raccolta curata da Isaac Asimov. Indubbiamente l’evoluzione di stili e concetti si inizia a notare ed il risultato è un volume piuttosto ibrido, in cui racconti assolutamente brillanti e “senza tempo” si affiancano ad altri più modesti o, semplicemente, più lontani dalla sensibilità di un lettore moderno.Una cosa è certa: il semplice fatto che questo volume includa il racconto di Asimov da cui poi sono stati sviluppati i romanzi della Fondazione lo rende meritevole di essere letto.Alcuni racconti meritevoli di essere letti:Fondazione, di Isaac AsimovNervi, di Lester del ReyIl Twonky, di Lewis Padgett (che fa molto Twilight Zone)Collabora, altrimenti… di A. E. Van VogtSi nota negativamente, invece, la mancanza di racconti di Heinlein.

[Matteo Pellegrini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nel 1942 gli echi della guerra si facevano sentire dolorosamente in tutto il mondo. Ma contemporaneamente, nei sotterranei dell'Università di Chicago, Enrico Fermi otteneva la prima reazione a catena controllata nel primo reattore nucleare del mondo: era cominciata l'era atomica. Sempre negli Stati Uniti veniva montato il primo vero computer del mondo (ENIAC). E proprio nel 1942, epoca d'oro per la fantascienza, sono stati scritti i racconti pubblicati in questa antologia: racconti di Fredric Brown, A.E. van Vogt, Alfred Bester, Hai Clement, George 0. Smith e lo stesso Asimov.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the fourth volume of the best of SF's Golden Age as selected by Greenberg and Asimov, excepting works by Heinlein for which they could not secure reprint rights. There are hard-sf classics from George O. Smith and Hal Clement, three from A.E. van Vogt (including "The Weapons Shop"), a good collaboration by C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner writing as Lewis Padgett, Del Rey's classic "Nerves," Asimov's own "Foundation," and Donald A. Wollheim's (yes, the D.A.W. publisher) best story, "Mimic." My favorite is Fredric Brown's story of Mitkey, "The Star Mouse." 1942 was a good year!

[Jim Mcclanahan]

Some interesting things: A tale by Hal Clement about beings who live inside the Sun (presaging David Brin's Sundiver by a large number of years. "Barrier" by Anthony Boucher proves that, just because the authors didn't have a lot of scientific facts going for them, they could still write intelligent and thoughtful works. All this from the year 1942, the year of my birth.

Worthwhile.

[TrumanCoyote · Rating 4 out of 5]

[FIRST READING: * * * * *]

[Hans Guttmann]

The stories were not great, although some were entertaining. It was amusing that in 2042 they still had stay at home moms and landlines.