These for novellas and for short stories demonstrate the scope and excitement of science fiction.”ģ. And Alfred Bester’s “Fondly Fahrenheit” and Peter Philipps’s “Dreams Are Sacred” manage to blend humor, terror, and ribaldry with great ingenuity. Ballard’s beautifully written “The Voices of Time” is subtle and puzzling, Mark Rose’s “We Would See a Sign” is horrifying as it is brief. Clarke’s small classic “The Sentinel,” to Jupiter in Poul Anderson’s brilliantly imagined “Call Me Joe,” to the strange and conceivably remote planet Loren Two in Murray Leinster’s “Exploration Team.” There is, as well, great variety in mood. The range is wide, from the Pacific island of Theodore Sturgeon’s extraordinary “Killdocer!” to our own moon in Arthur C. Ideas in one story echo or extend those in another, and their effect, taken together, is to exalt the importance of human beings over machines, of men over robots. (Uncredited - Lehr? - cover for the 1965 edition)įrom the inside flap of an earlier edition: “Strikingly diversified through they are, the eight stories brought together by Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest in this their theird anthology of science fiction possess a theme in common. Wide-ranging imagination, fascination with human and parahuman potential, and an unsurpassed talent for rendering what the future might feel like characterize John Varley’s stories - and are nowhere better displayed than in this first collection of his short fiction.”Ģ. The title story, nominated this year for a Nebula award by the Science Fiction Writers of America, is a haunting treatment of communication beyond our normal senses, an unusually enriching and absorbing work. Most of us feel pretty negatively about skyjackers, but “Air Raid” shows an unexpected rational for it “Retrograde Summer,” The Black Hole Passes,” and “In the Bowl” are (among other strange things) unique and confusing love stories “In the Hall of the Martian Kinds” is a new and enthralling twist on the planetary castaways theme and “Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance” shows what a Tin Pan Alley of the centuries to come might be like. Take, for instance, the plight of the hero of “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank.” All he wanted was a relaxed weekend as a lion but a meddlesome kid switched a circuit, and his psyche was trapped inside a computer… And what creative spirit wouldn’t envy the artist in “The Phantom of Kansas” who composes storms? His Quantum novel The Ophiuchi Hotline established the “Eight Worlds” setting of many of these tales - a bizarre future in which genetic engineering, sex changes, and arcane pleasures and trades are commonplace. The Persistence of Vision, John Varley (1978)įrom the inside flap of an earlier edition: “These nine stories show the best work of the decade’s most exciting new writer of science fiction. Cherryh was one of my favorite authors as a teen so it’s always nice to come across one of her works I hadn’t devoured yet - in this case, her second novel Brothers of Earth (1976).ġ. Thus, despite the egregious cover, I snatched his collection of 70s stories, The Persistence of Vision (1978)… I look forward to diving into this one.Īlso, C. John Varley is one of the important 70s writers that I still haven’t read. Ballard, and Murray Leinster tales in the same volume… The entire Spectrum collection (I-V) brings together some fantastic works. Even more appealing are the famous Poul Anderson, J. Some fun finds! Perhaps surprisingly, I still haven’t read Clarke’s “The Sentinel” (1951) so I was happy to find it in a collection collated by Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest - Spectrum 3 (1963).
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