Review: Science Fiction by Scientists, edited by Michael Brotherton

Science Fiction by Scientists, edited by Michael Brotherton
Tradepaper: Springer, 978-3-319-41101-9, $19.99, 214pp, January 2017 [1]

• “Down and Out” by Ken Wharton
• “The Tree of Life” by Jennifer Rohn
• “Supernova Rhythm” by Andrew Fraknoi
• “Turing de Force” by Edward M. Lerner
• “Neural Alchemist” by Tedd Roberts
• “Hidden Variables” by Jed Brody
• “Upside the Head” by Marissa Lingen
• “Betelgeuse” by J. Craig Wheeler
• “Sticks and Stones” by Stephanie Osborn
• “One for the Conspiracy Theorists” by Jon Richards
• “The Schroedinger Brat Paradox” by Carl(ton) Frederick
• “Fixer Upper” by Eric Choi
• “Spreading the Seed” by Les Johnson
• “The Gatherer of Sorrows” by J. M. Sidorova

In Science Fiction by Scientists, Mike Brotherton presents us with fourteen stories focused on science and scientific ideas written by “a new generation of twenty-first century scientist science fiction writers.” Even so, there is a zombie tale and a surrealist meltdown and other things you might not expect, though most do hew to more usual biology and physics and other disciplines and all have some sort of scientific basis underlying even the strangest things. In terms of mood, there are several dour, depressing stories, though fewer than most anthologies contain and there are a few upbeat, expansive tales, but I personally would have liked to see more of the latter. In terms of ideas, there is quite a bit of variety—epigenetics and quantum mechanics appear a couple of times and two stories are set on the International Space Station, but the stories in each pair are quite different from each other and I noticed no similar elements featured more than twice. As someone who loves idea-centered no-foolin’ science fiction, I enjoyed it, though not as much as I’d hoped. It opens and closes with two strong tales and, while nothing in between quite rises to excellence, only a couple struck me as full misses. However, I have to admit that many of the stories are weak on fictional values, mostly in the stereotypical ways that hard SF stories are perceived to be weak and people who aren’t especially hard SF fans are, alas, unlikely to be converted, unless by the two bookend stories. It genuinely is packed with ideas, though, and almost all the non-fiction essays (which are mostly about the science behind the stories) add substantial value themselves.

“Down and Out” by Ken Wharton

Ogby lives with her fellow Rygors in a strange universe in which a core of ice is surrounded by an ocean, which is surrounded by a sphere of rock. She has been melting her way below the surface in an effort to learn more about her world. However, the action is above, where more fascinating discoveries are being made as other scientists drill and blast into the rock up there. She has a deathly fear of heights, as she could get swept away by the currents when her bladders don’t provide the weight that normally keeps her safe on the surface. Indeed, this fear is so profound she can’t overcome it—she panics and basically locks up and is carted back down. After a period of depression, she again tackles her own research when she realizes that the other team had been using the new-fangled explosives to blast and that she could apply that to her own work to speed things up. She takes her underwater vehicle to explore the effects and breaks through the ice into an amazing and strange place never imagined but also a place that is uninhabitable. With her ship damaged, she desperately needs to survive and desperately needs to communicate her civilization-changing discoveries. The climax hinges on whether she can do either and there’s yet another discovery (for the reader) in store.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. I hope the synopsis above is at least a little intriguing—in the immediate post-read excitement, I tried to describe the story verbally and off the cuff to someone and didn’t seem to do a very good job. Indeed, the above is just a plot synopsis. From it, I hope you can see that there’s a genuine character with psychological and world-view issues and a genuine plot, and that this is well-constructed fiction. But this leaves out all the wonderful details of the creatures “chroming” and “soning” their communications, having a time system based on the oddly regular flexing of their world, the “airlabs” of carbon dioxide they build, the methane rains, the creatures’ logically sound arguments leading to false conclusions because of their bases in false premises (a favorite motif in much SF), and the whole process of disorientation and discovery in the story. My only criticism is one of two contradictory parts: I thought I knew what was going on very soon and I suspect most people would figure it out decisively. So it may be too hard to guess with certainty but too easy to suspect accurately, or too hard for some and too easy for others. Indeed, knowing the ending made it difficult to write the synopsis without feeling like I was spoiling it. Still, the author holds one little tidbit in reserve and, while it doesn’t change anything we’ve learned, it makes it more precise in a wonderful way. I recommend this generally, but if you love the alien perspectives sometimes found in Hal Clement’s work or the weird underwater milieus and aliens sometimes found in Robert L. Forward’s or James Cambias’ work, or the tales of under-equipped young aliens discovering the nature of their worlds as in Greg Egan’s Incandescence, then you should especially enjoy this.

“The Tree of Life” by Jennifer Rohn

A virologist is working on a project for NASA to create insta-terraforming bugs (sort of) as an escape from her dull job of making super apples when the aliens come to erase all terrestrial life and take all our stuff. One alien takes a liking to her and keeps her alive for awhile to talk genetics. Meanwhile, she works feverishly to combine her two projects to try to do an evolutionary end-run around the aliens. Will she succeed? And do we care? This does a good job on the science side in terms of making it interesting and has some decent descriptions of lab work but really doesn’t work as fiction as it is so unlikely and contrived and there is almost zero emotional authenticity to this traumatic apocalypse. (Our protagonist is extremely resilient.) And, succeed or fail, could her efforts possibly make up for what has happened? And how can she possibly see her alien as “a friend of sorts”? Some nice ideas, though—a shame a better story couldn’t have been woven around them.

“Supernova Rhythm” by Andrew Fraknoi

Eve is a graduate student astronomer who discovers an odd frequency and pattern to the supernovae in NGC 6946 and comes to an even odder conclusion which she shares with her supervisor.

It would be apt if this were a piece of “flash” fiction but it is (barely) longer than most of those. It contains a couple of infelicities. First, given an anthology of this type, I was really hoping to not read any present tense stories. Even if I liked present tense stories (which I don’t, as such), they are usually used to convey a sort of fairy tale effect or a pseudo-immediacy or perhaps any number of other things but, here, it has the effect of someone selling product on commercial television: “The graphs display instantly. It fits!” (And slices and dices! Act now!) Second, one could probably forgive avoiding an “as you know, Bob” with an infodump but to combine them is a bit much. The following is the student speaking to the supervisor and the narrator breaking in a clause too late:

“I have a galaxy whose supernova rate has been, well…unbelievably high. And, surprisingly, they are almost all Type Ia supernovae, which are only supposed to be a fifth of the total.”

Of the main kinds of exploding stars, Type Ia’s tend to be more rare….

(I do like the way she avoids saying the rate is “astronomical,” though.) Finally, the central idea is a humdinger but it seems our characters (or at least the supervisor) should probably assume a different cause—it’s difficult to specify why without spoiling, but, basically—because of general scientific principles and examples like ocean waves having a (relatively simple) rhythm and similar phenomena. Finally, there’s not much story here, flash or no. Still, while only the most “science over fiction” SF fan would likely enjoy this, I sort of did.

“Turing de Force” by Edward M. Lerner

A couple of AIs (who have no recollection of their origins) arrive in the solar system, drawn here by its “modulated electromagnetic energy,” as part of their search for intelligence and proceed to apply their Turing test on the denizens of the internet.

This story examines human intelligence (or lack thereof) and examines the Turing test from the perspective of AIs. There are minor problems (and lesser ones not worth detailing): given the aliens’ bias toward assuming intelligence can’t reside in protoplasm, the looser AI sure does leap to the possibility of human intelligence and the stiffer one grasps his implication too easily. More importantly, this sort of thing has been done a lot and just isn’t interesting (there are no real traumatic stakes to the story and four of its eleven pages are devoted to eight conversations between the AI and “intelligence candidates” on the internet) and the afterword, while not exactly scintillating itself, is much more interesting, raising issues regarding Winograd schemas and volition, that aren’t even addressed in this story whose point is simply “the Turing test is non-optimal.”

“Neural Alchemist” by Tedd Roberts

Professor John Wissen has been playing around with a special strain of stem cell derivates when he dies in a car crash. Then he returns to life and tries to figure out what happened. Thus the scientific zombie apocalypse begins.

This is an odd story: points for following Jack Williamson’s lycanthropes but deductions for doing it here and in this way. The afterword talks about SF being a means for scientists to “inspire our successors” but I sure hope no one is inspired to try to make zombies. This is more a There Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know story which is the antithesis of the scientific attitude. Still, fictionally, it ends with a kind of inadvertently comical bit of melodrama which oddly repeats the opening and some people who aren’t into the details of university science may not always be on the edge of their seats, and the fact that this was a “challenge” story often shows, but it’s at least ingenious and pretty fair fare.

“Hidden Variables” by Jed Brody

A couple of twins get together for their 33rd birthday and one has had a poem materialize under a teapot and has previously found the “hidden local variables” which makes her omniscient after a fashion. They do a dual QM infodump. Then they transmogrify and fight and then the universe goes all swirly for one of them.

Yep. A quantum physics “story” (which is to say, actually, a fable of pions). The day QM builds me a faster-than-light spaceship, I’ll be interested. Until then, I’ll stick to more sensible physics. But, on the fiction, I suppose if a surreal QM dialog floats your boat, this may be entertaining; if not, then definitely not.

“Upside the Head” by Marissa Lingen

Via her journal, we meet Catherine Huang and learn that she is a doctor working on a trial of “ARF” (amygdala regrowth factor) which involves a bunch of hockey players with head trauma. A hockey team is funding her for the PR, which leads to the need for diplomacy, which is not Huang’s strong suit. More importantly, this drug may cause side effects.

This story suffers from a Yoda opening—backwards the introduced elements are—so that it’s confusing and off-putting for the first few paragraphs, but it quickly sorts itself out and becomes quite interesting in a low-key way. Perhaps because it feels like a “Flowers for Algernon” setting and has some of its material, I felt rather underwhelmed after I’d finished it, though. But I think that would be the case even without comparisons. Still, a decent read.

“Betelgeuse” by J. Craig Wheeler

Two AIs happen to meet near Betelgeuse and hang out, having conversations. One is to study Betelgeuse’s evolution and its approaching supernova. The other has wandered around various places looking for life. As they converse, they get to be quite companionable and make some discoveries but all good things…

This dialog (basically) could definitely use more action and some of its coolest stuff is just a bit of background tossed off in a phrase. If you, like me, are fascinated by all things astronomical and stellar evolutionary this may just hold your interest, but only barely and, otherwise, probably won’t at all.

“Sticks and Stones” by Stephanie Osborn

One fine day on the ISS, a crew member gets sick. Steps are taken to get her home, both for her own sake and for the safety of the crew at risk from contamination. However, another crew member also gets sick, in an even more dangerous way. Part of the problem is that she can’t get home (as the experiment to resist or reverse bone loss doesn’t work at all according to plan) and another part is that no one realizes quite how sick she is.

Although it doesn’t apply in a space station, the line “In space, no one can hear you scream,” kept coming to mind. The author describes this as an SF mystery but it’s actually closer to a horror story. The author is also at pains to point out that this story is not an indictment of NASA and that she’s also a very pro-space person. Be that as it may, this is not at all a pro-space story. Leaving aside the ending, while biological processes such as defecation and vomiting are a part of life and can be legitimately dealt with in fiction, especially in a space story, doing so without repelling most readers demands the writer be at the top of her game and I don’t feel like this effort got away with it. More significantly, the structure turns out to be a purposeful arrangement of a couple of timelines indicated by the elaborate section headers but it isn’t immediately apparent in the course of reading: the story doesn’t seem to flow but seems to be just a pile of blocks.

“One for the Conspiracy Theorists” by Jon Richards

A scientist at the SETI Institute is searching for signals all by his lonesome and gets very industrious about it and eventually discovers what he thinks could be a signal but isn’t sure and isn’t sure what to do about it.

When the science afterword is fairly bland, undramatic and virtually indistinguishable from the “story,” then there is a problem. This was mildly interesting, as is SETI, but other than being a little more descriptive and describing a fictional dilemma, this is basically an essay followed by an essay.

“The Schroedinger Brat Paradox” by Carl(ton) Frederick

A psychiatrist calls in a quantum physicist for help with a patient who doesn’t seem to be a classic schizophrenic or dissociative identity disorder patient. At a loss for explanations, she wonders if the boy’s conversations and voices relate to bleed-through from the other worlds of the “many worlds” interpretation of QM. Despite her far-fetched notions, the scientist gets an idea about testing his own theory. When the test goes a bit askew, it leads to an extremely vivid test of the theory’s correctness or incorrectness and includes an extra final twist.

I’ve already said how I feel about QM so this story didn’t work for me, but it did have interesting ideas portrayed in a dramatically effective (and non-surreal) way with a genuinely creepy segment so may well work for QM-SF fans. And bonus points to the author(s) for the explanation of the byline.

“Fixer Upper” by Eric Choi

An American who had previously served on the International Space Station and a Chinese commander (later joined for a time by three more Chinese) work to repair and reactivate an abandoned ISS in the vicinity of 2030. A Chinese corporation run by a weird guy has big plans for it. The commander stays behind while the American takes the last ride back and observes the events.

This story could use more drama through its bulk and it wouldn’t have hurt if its ending was less predictable (but this was telegraphed more than once, so suspense doesn’t appear to have been the objective) but this was an interesting story, realistically described and got in a plug for duct tape (alas, no WD40 appears to have been used in the making of this story). By depicting an active and extroverted (if slightly wacky and derivative) China and a backwards US, this paints an unpleasantly (from a North American POV) plausible picture of the future.

“Spreading the Seed” by Les Johnson

Any story that begins with one character saying, “We’re actually going to the stars,” and another character replying, “About damn time,” already has a leg up with me. Akhil and his friend begin talking about why they’re going and what it all means. After that conversation, he also gets together with his wife but they mostly listen to a government spokesperson and we learn that, while we don’t know the precise nature of the distant world we’re going to, we have evidence from a nearer world that a sentient, technical civilization had existed there prior to destroying itself or being destroyed by others. And this is only part of the information.

Unfortunately, from the synopsis, it’s clear that this isn’t a narration of action, but is a lot of talking. I’m not sure that the master, Asimov, wasn’t almost sui generis (at least among non-playwrights) in consistently being able to succeed at wresting high drama from dialog. This does a decent job of painting an interesting scenario but it needs action. On minor aspects, it depicts a society with the usual “rejuve” and “contract marriages” and so on. On major aspects, the destroyed civilization (and why it’s in the story) is also fairly commonplace. But the exoplanet search (ongoing) and the depiction of a nifty method of interstellar travel (maybe someday?) are fresher and fun. There is also a pointed moral, indicated by the title. How you feel about that may depend on how much you agree with it. So, again, partly well-suited for me and perhaps others but probably insufficient for many.

“The Gatherer of Sorrows” by J. M. Sidorova

In a rather confusing opening, an elderly teacher is hauled off from class to appear before a billionaire. Via their emotionally loaded and mostly dramatically effective conversation and her flashbacks, we gradually learn how she, as a young scientist, was able to secure funding from a pair of billionaire twins to test her disconcertingly Lamarckian-flavored ideas (which apparently have some basis in current biological science?). The basic idea is that, in addition to random mutations over generations, non-coding RNA can “pick up” life experiences and rewrite a person’s own DNA which will directly affect their offspring. Isolating and reproducing “life-is-bad” and “life-is-good” elements is a knowledge win in itself but could also be used to engineer offspring. Which is what it turns out one of the twins may have done with the scientist/teacher’s egg, producing the current billionaire she’s trying to deal with—trying to restrain Caligula, basically.

This is another dialog/reverie story but, as I indicated, the intensity of the dialog works fairly well and the reverie does involve scientific, family, and social conspiracies which can have species-wide implications (with an interesting variation on the “money is speech” theme). Perhaps the only real flaw is that the teacher discovers a critical piece of information which, as far as I can tell, she explains with only “I started to suspect it was earlier than that” and I’m not clear what prompted her suspicion. This (familial biology story) isn’t quite my cup of tea and genuinely doesn’t seem quite as strong as “Down and Out” but is nearly so; this anthology opens and closes well.

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[1] This is a reformatted, but otherwise unchanged, reprint of a review which originally appeared at Tangent Online on December 22, 2016. Even though it’s not very good and too long (partly because I had to review every story), I’m reprinting it because it’s one of three “science fiction by scientists” anthologies I’ve reviewed (with one more to go) and I want them all to be available here. (The other two are Great Science Fiction by Scientists, edited by Groff Conklin and The Expert Dreamers, edited by Frederik Pohl.) I should also point out that the ISFDB lists this as having been published November 2016 which is probably actually correct but it was dated January 2017.

Review: The Year’s Best Military & Adventure SF: Volume 5, edited by David Afsharirad

Tradepaper: Baen, 978-1-4814-8406-0, $16.00, 319pp, June 2019 [1]

• “Love in the Time of Interstellar War” by Brendan DuBois
• “Going Dark” by Richard Fox
• “The Scrapyard Ship” by Felix R. Savage
• “Broken Wings” by William Ledbetter
• “A Song of Home, the Organ Grinds” by James Beamon
• “Once on the Blue Moon” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• “Crash-Site” by Brian Trent
• “Thirty-Three Percent Joe” by Suzanne Palmer
• “Hate in the Darkness” by Michael Z. Williamson
• “Homunculus” by Stephen Lawson
• “Not Made for Us” by Christopher Ruocchio
• “The Erkennen Job” by Chris Pourteau

The fifth edition of The Year’s Best Military & Adventure SF opens with a preface by the editor who muses on the series’ five-year voyage before giving way to an introduction by David Weber who again muses on the horrors of war coupled with the benefits of speculating on it and its future.

Despite the introduction, only half of this anthology is military SF, with the other half fitting better under the “Adventure” portion of the title. Stephen Lawson’s superb “Homunculus” is a case in point. Want to colonize Titan via a tiny little telepresence robot which you can use to construct habitats out of polyethylene “legos” extracted from the environment? Or at least think it’s a cool idea? Then read this story! The crisis in this milieu arises when a kid goes missing and a cryovolcano quake causes him to be trapped in a ruptured and deadly part of the habitat. The only hope for saving him involves those little robots and the powers of chemistry. Other good adventures include William Ledbetter’s sort of neo-pulp adventure “Broken Wings,” which involves two unlikely heroes (one overweight and one paraplegic) confronting pirates and Brian Trent’s “Crash-Site” in which competing groups of almost larger-than-life adventurers race to recover a biotech prize from a downed starship. I also enjoyed “The Erkennen Job,” Chris Pourteau’s future-noir tale in which one corporation controls the solar system but is riven with faction. One scientist in the employ of one faction may upset the balance of power in the system if another faction’s assassin doesn’t complete his mission. That hard-bitten (yet oddly sentimental) assassin forms an unexpected alliance with an idealistic cop as both, for their own reasons, try to get their man. Varying the dark tones, Felix R. Savage’s “The Scrapyard Ship” goes for a bit of humor as a couple of shapeshifting traders crash-land on a world where they get involved in interstellar politics while trying to get a replacement ship.

Even among the more restricted form of military SF there are some unconventional pieces. I thought James Beamon’s “A Song of Home, the Organ Grinds” was one of the best stories of the year and was amazed that this “year’s best” was the only one to select it. No one should miss this alternate history tale of the Crimean War with a street urchin press-ganged into combat aboard an airship crewed in part by vampire attack monkeys. Christopher Ruocchio’s “Not Made For Us” is another excellent tale of a soldier more or less compelled to fight. In this case, he and some companions are thrown into battle with a gigantic ship full of horrors and the combat is not the sleek and choreographed violence of Hollywood or the clear morality of political speeches, but is a messy, desperate flailing about full of physical and moral confusion. The editor acknowledges in the preface that he is friends with the author who works for Baen but “challenge[s] anyone to read ‘Not Made for Us’ and chalk up its inclusion to nepotism.” Challenge declined: it’s a very powerful piece. While not in the league of those two stories, Brendan DuBois’ “Love in the Time of Interstellar War” also dealt interestingly with its young soldier and his efforts to die well, win a lady’s favor, and help fend off alien invaders. Suzanne Palmer’s “Thirty-Three Percent Joe,” like “The Scrapyard Ship,” is another story with a humorous element regarding an incompetent soldier’s internal prosthetics and their efforts to keep him alive and has received a favorable response from many readers.

One thing readers might like to know is that several of these stories are in series but all those have definite conclusions and only one (“Hate in the Darkess,” among other issues) seems to suffer if the reader isn’t already familiar with the other tales. That aside, there are certainly stories I’d like to see in here which didn’t make the cut and I did scratch my head over the inclusion of a couple that did but some readers may love them and not like some of the ones I’ve highlighted. Regardless, there are many fine and varied stories here which should especially appeal to those looking for the good ol’ stuff but which should also include some gems for those differently inclined.

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[1] This is a reformatted, but otherwise unchanged, reprint of a review which originally appeared at Tangent Online on June 16, 2019. I’m reprinting it because this book came out in 2019 and I want all my reviews of books published from 2019 onward to be available here.

Review: Weird Tales, edited by Leo Margulies

Weird Tales, edited by Leo Margulies (Pyramid, 1964, pb, 155pp.) R-1029

“Introduction”
“The Man Who Returned” by Edmond Hamilton
“Spider Mansion” by Fritz Leiber, Jr.
“A Question of Etiquette” by Robert Bloch
“The Sea Witch” by Nictzin Dyalhis
“The Strange High House in the Mist” by H. P. Lovecraft
“The Drifting Snow” by August W. Derleth
“The Body-Masters” by Frank Belknap Long, Jr.
“Pigeons from Hell” by Robert E. Howard

‘Tis the season to be crawly, so I thought I’d review something in keeping with those spirits the day before Halloween. Weird Tales is a selection of stories published between 1931 and 1942 in the magazine of that name. The selection is credited to Leo Margulies, a publisher and editor involved with several SF magazines, but was (appropriately enough) ghost-edited by Sam Moskowitz. Presumably, Moskowitz also wrote the uncredited three-page introduction, which describes some of the history and character of the magazine, as well as the short introductions to the author of each story.

Being Weird Tales, the magazine included SF and fantasy as well as horror and two of the less successful tales in an otherwise very successful anthology represent those categories. Long’s 1935 story, “The Body-Masters,” is set in Cosmopolis in the year 5678 with a protagonist named V67 who is a Gland Surgeon. Seems almost everyone in this (dys|u)topia is a doctor, some of whom essentially vivisect maladjusted people with the aid of a strange pseudo-anaesthetic. This milieu and its robot mistresses are used to explore the atavistic emotion of jealousy and the notion of ideals. In one sense, this is a bad story but it is strangely imaginative and tackles a theme in a way that brought to mind Robert Silverberg’s “The Throwbacks” which, oddly, I just posted here though I reviewed it long ago. Almost half of Dyalhis’ long fantasy, “The Sea Witch,” is given over to repetitive descriptions of the nude woman an old man finds coming out of the sea on a dark and stormy night. Much is made of her archaic knowledge and speech but the narrative style is at least as archaic. Finally, the tale of magic revenge in a literally Byzantine plot unfolds in the second half after mixing New England, Norse myths, and reincarnation. I can see how some might enjoy this tale, but I didn’t.

While you could stretch “The Sea Witch” to fit some notion of horror, it’s essentially a fantasy as told. H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Strange High House in the Mist” also requires some stretching, though less so. Even leaving aside the magazine it was published in, it’s a very weird tale in which nothing much happens and it’s all told in a very mannered way but that achieves a sort of mesmeric effect conveying an awe-fulness symbolized by the unforgettable “strange high house in the mist” which the protagonist strives to reach. Moving more definitely into horror, Bloch’s “A Question of Etiquette” also deploys its style to good effect. Through the eyes of a census taker who has been drugged by the witch he had the misfortune to interview, we witness the wild night of her Sabbat and his strange fate. The narrator’s tone, which moves effectively from black comedy to phantasmagorical fear without varying the same basic pitch, is remarkable.

Several stories, such as “Sea Witch” and “High House” are New England tales and/or snowy. Derleth’s “The Drifting Snow” is another of them. In it, through an aunt who doesn’t like the curtains on one side of the house to be opened and a niece-in-law who feels a compulsion to open them, we learn a family secret from the past which led to a very strange sort of revenant who entices more to join her number. Aside from that, this is an oddly pleasant tale of a family get-together. Strange, but fairly effective. Another snowy story is Hamilton’s piece about “The Man Who Returned.” John Woodford wakes to find he’s been buried alive. The opening horror gives way to a strange inversion of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the irony keeps on ironing. It’s odd that a man so sick he’s been taken for dead is so vigorous in this tale which is also overly reliant on coincidence but it’s otherwise pretty effective and, despite being reminiscent of Poe, is also unusual. Leiber’s “Spider Mansion” is another tale that has some echoes of Poe (and is the sort of thing which, dammit, Janet, had its influence on The Rocky Horror Picture Show). With its “Negro” servants and psychologically twisted midgets, its obviously not a contemporary story but when a couple arrives at the creepy house of a person they think they know one dark and stormy night, the host, a midget-turned-giant via the superscience of his brother, hosts a morbid dinner and regales them with his own diabolical “genius.” Meanwhile, another horror lurks about the house and grounds and things must culminate in damsels in distress, swordplay, and fire. While an element of the ending can be made plausible, it takes some work and the title gives away what is held as a reveal in the story but this is otherwise fine, freaky stuff.

While the anthology is good as a whole, Howard’s tremendous “Pigeons from Hell” wrecks the grade curve. The second-longest tale of the book opens with two New Englanders on a jaunt to the South ending up spending the night at a deserted mansion. One wakes up from what he tries to convince himself was a nightmare only for things to go from bad to worse, resulting in a mad dash from the house. I don’t want to spoil even the opening section but perhaps some flavor of what happened can be given by quoting a piece from when the surviving traveler, Griswell, returns to the house with Buckner, the local sheriff.

He swung the beam around, and Griswell had never dreamed that the sight of the gory body of a murdered man could bring such relief.

“He’s still there,” grunted Buckner.

In the second section, the two men meet with a voodoo man and fill in some details of what Buckner knew of the sordid family history of the mansion’s last inhabitants before moving to the final section and the nightmarish showdown with a “zuvembie” monster. My only complaint with this story is that the first section is so powerful that the remainder, while also powerful and maintaining suspense and interest, can’t quite match that opening. The Leiber, for instance, is very good, but is quite fantastic from the start, which may not allow some readers to get into it and the superscience may be effective for some and a distraction for others. This tale’s prosaic opening and initially very basic horror works much more certainly. Lovecraft’s style, for instance, works very well for his tale but Dyalhis’ (at least for me) was fatally damaging. This story skips any possible problem with that and just tells its tale. Again, with the Dyalhis, the disparate mythological pieces don’t mesh that well for me whereas this tale’s antebellum relics and imported voodoo fit superbly. Highly recommended.

Review: The Expert Dreamers, edited by Frederik Pohl

The Expert Dreamers, edited by Frederik Pohl (Doubleday, 1962, hc, 248pp.) LCCN: 62-11295

“Introduction” by Frederik Pohl
“At the End of the Orbit” by Arthur C. Clarke [aka “Hate”]
“On the Feasibility of Coal-Driven Power Stations” by O. R. Frisch
“A Feast of Demons” by William Morrison (Joseph Samachson)
“The Heart on the Other Side” by George Gamow
“Lenny” by Isaac Asimov
“The Singers” by W. Grey Walter [excerpt]
“The Invasion” by Robert Willey (Willy Ley)
“To Explain Mrs. Thompson” by Philip Latham (R. S. Richardson)
“Adrift on the Policy Level” by Chandler Davis [aka Chan Davis]
“The Black Cloud” by Fred Hoyle [excerpt]
“Chain Reaction” by Boyd Ellanby (Lyle and William C. Boyd)
“The Miracle of the Broom Closet” by W. Norbert (Norbert Wiener)
“Heavy Planet” by Lee Gregor (Milton A. Rothman)
“The Test Stand” by Lee Correy (G. Harry Stine)
“Amateur in Chancery” by George O. Smith
“The Mark Gable Foundation” by Leo Szilard

Frederik Pohl’s introduction to this 1962 book begins by talking about how remote science has become from the layman’s perceptions and common sense, moves on to talking about how science fiction is aptly named because it is fiction infused with the sensibility of the scientific method, and concludes by talking about how yesterday’s science fiction reader has become today’s scientist and how that cycle will continue. Along the way, he cites Sturgeon’s law which indicates that 90% of SF is trash and has the corollary that that is unremarkable because 90% of everything is trash. Fortunately, though not everything in this book is gold, it defies any specific application of Sturgeon’s law. Of the fourteen stories in this collection (leaving aside the excerpts of novels by W. Grey Walter and Fred Hoyle) I recommend four and little of even the remaining 71% is trash.

Several of the 71%, especially early on, fall into a couple of classes and some of each of those classes share a common attribute. In the “more science fictional” class and having the attribute of reading well even if they don’t ultimately succeed, I’d place Arthur C. Clarke’s “At the End of the Orbit” and Boyd Ellanby’s “Chain Reaction.” The former deals with a spacecraft coming down in the ocean (a motif repeated in “Heavy Planet”) where a Hungarian diver with a hatred for Russians develops a plan to exact vengeance on the cosmonaut inside. While the narrative is intense and interesting, an element is clearly contrived and the whole thing plays on sentimentality. The latter involves a group of scientists visiting a colleague in an insane asylum. That man has been committed because he claimed to have calculated that the end of the world would be brought about by the experiment they are all involved in. That experiment has just taken place and they’ll all find out whether the “mad scientist” could have possibly been right any minute now. The scenario is compelling but I have to wonder if this is how the other scientists would spend what might be their last day on earth and there is a far more severe problem with the end which I can’t reveal without spoiling it.

Remaining at least somewhat science fictional but being less interesting from start to finish, George O. Smith is not represented here by any superb “Venus Equilateral” story but by “Amateur in Chancery” which is much like several recent SF stories I’ve read lately in that it depends on a scientific organization being indistinguishable from anarchy and involves a character who is almost literally “too stupid to live.” A sort of jump gate is established from Earth to Venus and a woman impulsively pilots a vehicle through it. Seeing a native Venusian, she assumes the atmosphere must be breathable but is rendered comatose when she exits the vehicle, doomed to die quickly but not so quickly that our scientists back on Earth can’t try to figure out how to explain to a primitive living under clouds the concepts of “left and right” so he can press the correct button to return her to Earth. All this is communicated via a telepathic human girl. There are some nice points about frames of reference and common assumptions but the story obviously constructed to make these points is deficient. The one story in the book I have a hard time finding anything good to say about is George Gamow’s “The Heart on the Other Side.” A man must win the hand of his girl by proving to her shoe-manufacturing father that his theories about there being Moebius regions on Earth is correct and, to do so, he takes a shipment of right-shoes to the Amazon to turn them into left-shoes which will help the father’s business because demolishing pre-existing methods of production and replacing them with trips to the Amazon will somehow be more economical. On his return, the suitor believes he has failed, so throws away all the shoes but discovers something on his return. This seemed more like a very old romance story with a wide streak of silliness than SF.

Speaking of things that don’t seem entirely like SF, the “more fantastic class” includes “A Feast of Demons” by William Morrison, which may be talking about entropy-reversing particles but refers to them as “demons” which contributes to the fantastic feeling. The tale of people aging backwards is strangely interesting until the end, which is probably intended to be humorous but is definitely anti-climactic. Similarly, Philip Latham’s “To Explain Mrs. Thompson,” which examines the difference between describing and explaining, also maintains interest as it takes the reverse approach and deals very matter-of-factly with the apparition of a man’s dead wife in telescopes pointed towards Andromeda with tension rising as the phenomenon comes closer to the Earth before the tale reaches its anti-climax. On the other hand, I never engaged with W. Norbert’s “The Miracle of the Broom Closet,” about a remarkable and devout janitor at a lab in Mexico contributing to an odd interplay between science and religion.

Moving to Pohl’s frequently occupied bailiwick of satire, “Adrift on the Policy Level” by Chandler Davis didn’t initially grab me or even ultimately overwhelm me, but did become more clearly pointed and funny as it progressed through its Kafka Americana narrative of a scientist recruiting a worldly brother-in-law to aid him in his quest to win the favor of The Powers That Be by playing the required social, bureaucratic, and self-deluding games that the suitor only dimly comprehends. The twice-twisted conclusion is effective. Leo Szilard’s “The Mark Gable Foundation” opens with the narrator perfecting his suspended animation technique and committing to travel 300 years into the future. He says, “I thought my views and sentiments were sufficiently advanced, and that I had no reason to fear I should be too much behind the times in a world that advanced a few hundred years beyond the present.” He changes his tune when he is awakened a mere 90 years into his journey to find a world in which having teeth is no longer socially acceptable but making a living as a sperm donor is. This 1961 story turns out to be a satire largely pointed at the moves in the late 1940s to establish a National Science Foundation. Its thesis is that making scientists become grant-chasing bureaucrats will lead to the stultification of science through safe and fashionable pursuits (and, as much as I support coherent public commitments to science, I have to admit the validity of his critiques). That aside, this would also make a timely read for today’s sufficiently advanced and morally perfect humans. While perhaps not a “satire,” O. R. Frisch’s “On the Feasibility of Coal-Driven Power Stations” is certainly satirical and an example of the sub-genre of “science fiction stories written as science fact articles.” As such, it’s lacking in fictional qualities but the notion of a future atomic-powered society discovering the radical notion of burning coal to supply power has its interest.

The last set is made up of stories which are both excellent and fully science-fictional (except one which is even further away from fantasy in being almost mainstream). Isaac Asimov’s “Lenny” is a Susan Calvin robot story in which a robot is “born” malformed through a fluke and doesn’t operate as designed but can learn. This story (not the greatest of the robot stories, but a good one) tackles several issues from the Heinleinian motif of “specialization is for insects” to methods of increasing interest in science to corner cases of the Three Laws but also focuses on Susan Calvin, herself. Asimov is not usually given credit for characterization (and didn’t take it, himself, arguing that ideas were more important in SF) but Susan Calvin is a significant and complex character creation, not least in gender terms. Created in the 1940s as a fiercely intelligent, independent, and scientific woman, she is sometimes portrayed as “unfeminine” while simultaneously having “intuition” and other supposedly feminine characteristics. Either way, this complexity is part of why she’s such a remarkable character and comes into play in this story.

Robert Willey’s “The Invasion” deals with a mysterious alien invasion in which a ship settles down and takes possession of a hydroelectric power plant. One man uses good old-fashioned engineering, sticktuitiveness, and professionalism to attempt to thwart their mysterious but deadly designs.

Similarly, Lee Correy’s “The Test Stand” involves a professional man in an era of safe rocketry narrating his experiences as a younger man when it was not safe. When a test firing failed, he and a co-worker were put into a situation which was akin to defusing a bomb, made all the more nerve-wracking by the fact that the man’s wife and child had come to see the experiment. The man learns something about himself and his job. In terms of dramatic plot and psychological effect this is reminiscent of Lester del Rey’s “Nerves” and is excellent and, being published in 1955, its subject of rockets certainly puts it into the category of very-near-future-SF but the story’s one flaw is that it could be written about literally having to defuse a bomb with much loss of science-fictional interest but little other change.

Finally, Lee Gregor’s “Heavy Planet” reads a bit like “Hal Clement meets Thunderball.” People are living on a planet with incredible gravity such that steel is almost like kleenex to them. However, they have enemies and need atomic weapons to deal with them so, when an atomic-powered spaceship goes down in the ocean, the protagonist and some of those enemies converge on the wreckage and tense combat ensues. This thrilling tale is simultaneously action- and idea-packed and I enjoyed it a lot. Considering each of the “science” and the “fiction,” “The Test Stand” is superior in the latter while this is superior in the former but both are highly recommended.

Review: Great Science Fiction by Scientists, ed. by Groff Conklin

Great Science Fiction by Scientists
edited by Groff Conklin

Date: 1962
Format: Mass-market paperback
ISBN: None (book number: AS 218)
Pages: 313
Price: $0.95
Publisher: Collier Books

Contents:

• “What If…” by Isaac Asimov
• “The Ultimate Catalyst” by Eric Temple Bell (“John Taine”)
• “The Gostak and the Doshes” by Miles J. Breuer, M.D.
• “Summertime on Icarus” by Arthur C. Clarke
• “The Neutrino Bomb” by Ralph S. Cooper
• “Last Year’s Grave Undug” by Chan Davis
• “The Gold-Makers” by J. B. S. Haldane
• “The Tissue-Culture King” by Julian Huxley
• “A Martian Adventure” by Willy Ley
• “Learning Theory” by James McConnell
• “The Mother of Necessity” by Chad Oliver
• “John Sze’s Future” by John R. Pierce
• “Kid Anderson” by Robert S. Richardson
• “Pilot Lights of the Apocalypse” by Dr. Louis N. Ridenour
• “Grand Central Terminal” by Leo Szilard
• “The Brain” by Norbert Weiner

A couple of months ago, I reviewed Mike Brotherton’s anthology, Science Fiction by Scientists, for Tangent. This inspired me to read Groff Conklin’s Great Science Fiction by Scientists, which I’d had laying around for awhile. It’s a 1962 anthology from Collier which includes sixteen stories (mostly post-WWII, including two original stories, but going back to 1926) written by people ranging from those with scientific training to those who actually  practice science. The stories themselves are sometimes surprisingly unscientific, though most of them are science fiction and some are pretty typical hard SF. Conklin makes the odd editorial non-decision to present them alphabetically by author which leads to a rather random feel and some odd streaks (for instance, the first story is a fantasy and the last six are fairly weak). It does have several strong stories, though.

Only two primary clusters really struck me, though there are another two lesser clusters. One is of surprisingly melodramatic stories which are, in some cases, even more surprisingly effective. J. B. S. Haldane’s “The Gold-Makers” is probably the strongest of these, dealing with a complicated noir mob-like plot turning on the financial implications of being able to create gold, with some parties trying to achieve this and others trying to suppress it. This is wrapped in an “I’m publishing this true story as fiction” wrapper, which is entertaining. Julian Huxley’s “The Tissue-Culture King” may offend modern sensibilities, though it’s actually somewhat ahead of the curve of its time of writing (1926). It’s set in darkest Africa and deals with a scientist manipulating the tribe that has captured him, initially for self-preservation and eventually for more grandiose reasons. A couple of Europeans happen upon this situation and get involved. “The Ultimate Catalyst” by Eric Temple Bell (John Taine), is another jungle tale, this time in a South American dictator’s realm and is a sort of “Jungle of Doctor Moreau” tale which creaks and clunks a bit with its exotic horror trappings involving strange fungi but is fairly readable. Norbert Weiner’s “The Brain” is another mob tale involving a brain surgeon. It’s odd that scientists, being especially interested in causality and probability would write so many stories in which the plotting is markedly contrived or convenient but there are several such tales here and this is one of them.

The second group involves entities coming to wrong conclusions based on insufficient evidence or other issues, sometimes with the “crackpot” with the “crazy theories” really being a misunderstood genius and the only one who’s even close to being correct. The best of these is the excellent “Learning Theory” by James (V.) McConnell. It focuses on confirmation bias and turns the table on a psychologist by having him get abducted by aliens and put through his paces in accordance with their pet theories, so to speak. Very clever and with a sound critique of a scientific problem. On the other hand, Leo Szilard’s “Grand Central Terminal” just has some aliens, on earth after we’ve blown ourselves up, trying to figure out why metal disks were placed in excretion chambers and trying to save a crackpot’s reputation by shooting down its crazy theories. Finally, “John Sze’s Future” by John R. Pierce (J. J. Coupling) is a rather weak piece original to this book which uses more confirmation bias and linguistic ambiguity to poke some fun at John “C”ampbell and his love of “psi.”

While the last two of those touch on humans doing bad things with the atom or otherwise going extinct, handling that subject isn’t their primary objective. It is the primary objective of Ralph S. Cooper’s fiction article “The Neutrino Bomb,” Louis N. Ridenour’s “Pilot Lights of the Apocalypse” (a “playlet in one act”), and Chan Davis’ more conventionally narrated “after the bomb” story, “Last Year’s Grave Undug.” None of these are particularly successful as fiction though Davis’ is the best of them.

Other than the interior of a ship in “Learning Theory,” we only leave Earth twice and move to a supposedly alternate Earth once. That’s disappointing in itself but perhaps the most disappointing story in the book for me was “A Martian Adventure” (aka “At the Perihelion”) by Willy Ley (aka Robert Willey). I was excited because: it’s Willy Ley; it’s Mars; it’s a long novella. It does have some good discussions of orbital mechanics and such but, alas, to call its plot “picaresque” would be kind and even I, who usually ignore “social datedness” as irrelevant, was struck by the approach to (even low level) native life and the human woman. On the other hand, Arthur C. Clarke’s tale of “man against the elements” with “Summertime on Icarus” was superb, being strongly plotted and making me feel like I was on Icarus myself. Both stories, oddly, deal with extreme heat in space. The alternate world story is Miles J. Breuer’s memorable “The Gostak and the Doshes,” which tells of a guy slipping into an earth in which people madly emote over senseless slogans rather than using reason. (These days, this earth feels like the alternate one.) It’s rather lazily plotted but makes up for it with its other excellences.

Of the remaining tales, Conklin bizarrely selects Isaac Asimov’s fantasy, “What If…” which involves a married couple seeing alternate paths presented to them by a weird guy with a hypnotism ball. Conklin defends the selection by saying it’s “completely charming” and that it’s “by Asimov.” Well, everything by Asimov is by Asimov and I don’t pick up Great Science Fiction by Scientists to read even completely charming fantasies. It is a fine story, of course, but not a great choice. Then there’s “Kid Anderson,” an android boxer tale from R(obert) S. Richardson which has another contrived plot and isn’t very good, and the sociological “The Mother of Necessity” by Chad Oliver which is okay, but not particularly compelling.

To recap, I particularly liked:

• “Summertime on Icarus” by Arthur C. Clarke
• “Learning Theory” by James McConnell
• “The Gostak and the Doshes” by Miles J. Breuer
• “The Gold-Makers” by J. B. S. Haldane
• and perhaps “The Tissue-Culture King” by Julian Huxley

If you have a particular interest in the anthology’s subject, I mildly recommend the whole thing but, if not, hopefully you can find some of the recommended ones elsewhere because you probably wouldn’t care for the anthology itself.

Edit (2018-05-26): re-positioned cover image, added bibliographical information.