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Famous Science-Fiction Stories: Adventures in Time and Space

Raymond J. Healy (Editor),

J. Francis McComas (Editor)

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Mar 20, 2008 Werner rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, science-fiction

Note, April 21, 2022: I just edited this review to make a couple of minor grammatical/stylistic changes.

Originally published in 1946, this thick anthology was the first major venture by a mainstream U.S. publisher in the SF field, and as such a significant contributor to the post-war popularization of the genre with general readers outside of what had been, up to that time, a small ghetto of fans served by a handful of pulp magazines. (The new popular interest in and respectability of the genre Note, April 21, 2022: I just edited this review to make a couple of minor grammatical/stylistic changes.

Originally published in 1946, this thick anthology was the first major venture by a mainstream U.S. publisher in the SF field, and as such a significant contributor to the post-war popularization of the genre with general readers outside of what had been, up to that time, a small ghetto of fans served by a handful of pulp magazines. (The new popular interest in and respectability of the genre was largely due to the war's obvious vindication of two staple SF themes that the English-speaking pre-war scientific community had largely dismissed as nutcake fantasies: atomic energy and rocketry; science fiction, people suddenly felt, was the form of literature best adapted for learning about the new scientific reality. Capitalizing on this interest, the editors included, along with the 33 stories, two scientific essays on rocketry and time travel, which I did not read --my interest here was just in the fiction.) Since I'd read most of the stories, I've had the collection posted for some time on my read shelf; but I've only recently read the last few so that I could review the book.

Drawing their material strictly from the genre pulps of the 1930s and early 40s, and trying to select what they felt to be the best samples of that tradition, the editors assembled works from 23 authors (several, obviously, represented more than once) who include many of the best known of that generation. The Goodreads description above gives a helpful complete contents list of essays and stories, with the authors --and also identifies the latter by their real names as well as the pen names that frequently disguise their identity in the book itself. (It might be mentioned, though, that while they only credit Henry Kuttner as "Lewis Padgett," his wife C. L. Moore was a frequent collaborator in works published under that moniker.)

Given their origin, the stories often reflect the limitations of the technophilic, largely secular humanist perspective of the handful of pulp magazine editors who shaped the American SF ghetto in and before its "Golden Age" --especially John W. Campbell, Jr., two of whose own stories are included. (One author, Eric Frank Russell, was British, but the two stories by him appeared in the U.S. pulps.) Uncritical Darwinism is often a theme and a presupposition, as is triumphalist utopian optimism; but the two ideas sometimes war against each other, as some writers imagine the concepts of extinction and devolution applying to the human race like other species before them, or predict the dying of the solar system, in a philosophic framework devoid of purpose or teleology and holding no brief for humanity as such. (H. P. Lovecraft and his tradition, which developed outside the SF ghetto, isn't represented here; but the latter perspective has much in common with his "cosmicism.") Hard science definitely predominates, except for the several time-travel stories, and most of those revolve around time paradoxes, a type of scenario that I find too implausible to summon a "willing suspension of disbelief" for. And the style of writing in a number of the stories is relatively pedestrian. (In several cases, I had some trouble identifying which stories I'd already read --which does NOT speak well for their memorable quality!) Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll" is particularly poor stylistically, long and tedious; it also reflects his ultra-right wing economic attitudes in his picture of labor union members as the villains, ignorant and duped tools of a union boss out to victimize society for his own personal agenda. And while the true literary value of SF has never lain in successful prediction of future technology, his vision here of the future replacement of the highway system by a system of giant conveyor belts is so implausibly wild and off-beam, flying in the face of economic and technological practicality, that it boggles the mind to think that any editor took it seriously. Another booby prize in that area goes to Lester del Rey's "Nerves," where the message is that atomic energy MUST be pursued, despite the misgivings of the troglodytic, backward-looking naysayers --but it must be pursued because it's of irreplaceable value as a killer of the boll weevils that bedevil the cotton industry! :-) (In that story, a Chernobyl-style meltdown is, of course, averted by a technologically brilliant hero, the kind we can always automatically count on to save us --the effect of that message, on any readers with a nodding acquaintance with reality, might not have been as reassuring as del Rey imagined it to be. :-)) And the "humor" of the "Lewis Padgett" stories featuring Galloway, the inventor who's scientifically brilliant only when he's intoxicated, has not worn well over the ensuing decades.

Those considerations pulled down the overall rating of the collection. But there are stories here that would easily deserve five stars, rated by themselves. Van Vogt's "The Weapons Shop" and Heinlein's "Requiem" are absolute masterpieces, libertarian classics that will endure forever. S. Fowler Wright's "Brain" is the complete antithesis of the whole secular humanist utopian vision, a root-and-branch excoriation of that whole school and everything it stands for, which is doubly satisfying here because it's so unexpected in this venue! (Not surprisingly, its appearance in this anthology was its first U.S. publication --given its British setting, Wright may also have been British.) It's also amazingly prescient in predicting the anti- democratic nature of scientific elitism's influence on government, and the willingness of science-worshipers to annihilate a whole city full of civilians as a military expedient. (Unfortunately, since 1945 the latter hasn't been confined to the realm of fiction --nor has the former.) Other favorites of mine include de Camp's "The Blue Giraffe" and Fredric Brown's delightful "The Star Mouse." Campbell's "Who Goes There?" and Van Vogt's "Black Destroyer" are two of the best variations on the "humans vs. super-deadly menacing monster" theme ever penned. And besides these standouts, several second-tier tales, such as "Symbiotica" and "Within the Pyramid," are entertaining and well worth a read. Even some of the stories whose presuppositions I don't share are well-written; and Asimov's "Nightfall" has one of the genre's most original premises (though he couldn't resist his trademark bashing of religious believers in trying to execute the premise). So overall, the collection well deserves a positive rating, as one that I liked! ...more

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