LESTER del REY, Editor – Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Second Annual Edition. E. P. Dutton, hardcover. 1973. Ace, paperback, December 1975.

   #11. PHYLLIS MACLELLAN “Thus Love Betrays Us.” Short story. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1972. Reprinted in The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: 20th Series, edited by Edward L. Ferman (Doubleday, hardcover, 1973).

   I have been remiss. It’s been over a month since I reviewed the previous story in this anthology. At this rate, when I’m done, an event that is still four stories off, neither you not I (and especially I) will have any way to look back and put the book into any kind of overall perspective.

   But I can say this now. I admire Lester del Rey’s willingness to pick stories by authors who were not very well known then and even more so now. Phyllis Maclellan’s SF writing résumé consists of seven short stories and one novel, Turned Loose on Irdra (Doubleday, hardcover, 1970), which seems to escaped the notice of almost everyone.

   But even so, “Thus Love Betrays Us” is a good one, and is well worth being chosen for this Best of the Year anthology. When biologist Alex Barthold is dropped off by an exploratory ship on the planet Deirdre to learn what he can about it as a one man expedition, what he does not know is that the ship will never return. Until superiors realize that something has gone wrong, he will be as alone as he can be.

   This on a planet on which there is no day or night, only an ever present gloom on a place in which the only plant life is various forms of moss. He sends reports out, but replies never come back. He’s all alone on a world that seems to close in on him more and more every day.

   Until, that is, he comes across a strange truly alien being whose life he happens to save. They become friends, he thinks, but aliens are aliens, and friendship may or may not be friendship in the sense that Barthold assumes to be reciprocal. This, in the end, is the point of the story, most literately told. No Planet Stories tale, this.

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Previously from the del Rey anthology: C. N. GLOECKNER “Miscount.”

STAR TREK: Harlan Ellison’s THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER – The Original Teleplay #1 . IDW Publishing, first of a five issue mini-series, August 2014; later collected into book form. Based on Harlan Ellison’s original teleplay, adapted by Scott Tipton and David Tipton. Artwork by J. K. Woodward.

   There’s better than even odds that every Star Trek fan reading this already knows the story behind the scenes of what was the final episode of the first season. Ellison’s original version of the teleplay won the annual Writers Guild of America Award for “Best Episodic Drama on Television.” The version that was shown was substantially different from Ellison’s original story in many ways, but it was still a sensation when shown and in fact was later awarded the Hugo Award in 1968 for the “Best Dramatic Presentation.”

   A loud and public falling out between Harlan Ellison and Gene Roddenberry ensued and lasted for many years. Ellison was not a man who took slights — real or perceived — lightly, to put it mildly.

   Unfortunately I have only the first issue of the comic book mini-series. I will either have to track down the other four or buy the complete collected version in either hardcover or paperback. The people at IDW worked closely with Ellison, and I’m impressed with the end result, the little of it that I have in hand.

   The story has to to with a majestic city on an isolated planet on the rim of the galaxy, a place where time and space converge. A portal exists there that can take those brave or desperate enough into Earth’s past. The 1920s, in fact, and in order to undo a change in the timeline, Kirk, Spock and crew must go back and make things right again. This, they discover, is not so easy to do.

   The artwork is far better than average, verging at time to nothing short of spectacular, and it’s no wonder the folks at NBC said, no, we can’t do that on the budget we have. The likenesses of the main characters, while not as consistent as I’d like, are very very close and always recognizable. The people behind the project had a good time working on it, I’m sure, and it shows.

  LOU SAHADI, Editor – An Argosy Special: Science Fiction. One-shot reprint magazine. Popular Publications, 1977.

#4. JOHN W. JAKES “Half Past Fear.” Short story. First appeared in Super Science Stories, August 1951. Otherwise never reprinted.

   Before John Jakes hit it rich with his Kent Family Chronicles, he was generally regarded as an all-around hack, and rightly so. He wrote a couple dozen sci-fi novels, maybe a dozen more mystery and spy novels, of which his PI Johnny Havoc books may be the best remembered today, and even a half dozen “Man from UNCLE” stories for the magazine of the same name in the mid-60s.

   Of his fantasy and science fiction, his Brak the Barbarian pastiches of Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales are collectable now; the rest are safely forgotten. And the same can be said of “Half Past Fear,” his third to be published short story. In it a family of three takes in a strange traveler as a boarder, only to discover that he came from the past and that he is being pursued.

   Time travel tales are almost always fun to read — they make up one of my favorite subgenres in all SF — but this one is clunky and confusing, with one of the lead characters, unable to explain how things turn out, simply shrugs and calls upon the unexplainable “paradoxes of time travel” to bail out both the author and the story, and not at all succeding.

   One might be forgiven in thinking that this story was chosen for Jakes’ name only, to help sell the magazine, but if you take a look at the image at the upper left, you’ll see that none of the authors are mentioned, only the titles of the stories. A strange marketing device, indeed.

       —

Previously from this Lou Sahadi anthology: LEIGH BRACKETT “Child of the Green Light.”

  DONALD WOLLHEIM, Editor, with Arthur W. Saha – The 1989 Annual World’s Best SF. Daw #783, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1989. Cover art by Jim Burns.

#9. B. W. CLOUGH “Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog.” Short story. First appeared in Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, June 1988.

   This was Brenda Clough’s first published short story, after four novels, and it’s a good one. Most of her work has been fantasy, but even though it’s told in the style of an rural fantasy, this one’s definitely science fiction.

   It’s about the owner of a comic book store — one who also carries other popular culture memorabilia, as most owners of comic book stores have to do in order to survive — and he’s realizes that he’s found a pot of gold when he begins to get repeat orders, many times over, for the aforementioned memorabilia.

   Not comic books, but X-Men bumper stickers, fuzzy dice, lawn trolls, iron-on decals of Disney characters, commemorative liquor bottles, Deely-Bobbers, and anything at all associated with Elvis, including plush floppy-eared dogs that you could wind up to play … you guessed it.

   Thinking that his new patron– who pays only in cash, brand new twenty-dollar bills — must be a reclusive millionaire, and having never met a reclusive millionaire before — makes the trek out to the wildest part of West Virginia mountain country to pay him a visit.

   What he finds there is the crux of the story, and obviously I dare not tell you. I think I’d react differently than does the teller of this story, but on the other hand, maybe just maybe he’s on to something.

       —

Previously from the Wollheim anthology: FREDERIK POHL “Waiting for the Olympians.”

  LOU SAHADI, Editor – An Argosy Special: Science Fiction. One-shot reprint magazine. Popular Publications, 1977.

#3. LEIGH BRACKETT “Child of the Green Light.” Short story. First published in Super Science Stories<, February 1942; reprinted in the April 1951 issue. Reprinted in Classic Science Fiction: The First Golden Age, edited by Terry Carr (Harper & Row, hardcover, 1978). First collected in Martian Quest: The Early Brackett (Haffner Press, hardcover, 2002).

   There are science fiction stories so vast in scale it is next to impossible for the human mind to comprehend them, and even though this tale takes place within the orbit of Mercury in our own solar system, this is one of them.

   Son is a living creature — a mutation, perhaps — capable of existing in space without protection, the only living being in a junkyard of wrecked ships that his own space craft is part of. Nearby and at the center of this story is the Light, burning green in color, and the Veil, on the other side of which is Aona, a creature such as himself but obviously female.

   Coming to investigate the Light is, for the first time in a place where time and aging have no meaning, is a ship of seven humans and other intelligent aliens. It seems that a Cloud has passed through the solar system, changing the metabolism of all the creatures it touched. Destroying the Light is the only means of survival for billions of people.

   What has happened to Son to make him the being that he is? Is there any way for him to cross through the Veil to become part of the parallel universe where Aona is? And what about the one of the seven who sees Son as someone with powers that, if had them and the Light were destroyed, could rule the solar system?

   Whew! One thing you can say about this story is that has a cosmic Sense of Wonder, the secret ingredient of stories such as this one, and is the absolute epitome of Super Science.

       —

Previously from this Lou Sahadi anthology: CHAD OLIVER “The Land of Lost Content.”

  LOU SAHADI, Editor – An Argosy Special: Science Fiction. One-shot reprint magazine. Popular Publications, 1977.

#2. CHAD OLIVER “The Land of Lost Content.” Short story. First published in Super Science Stories, November 1950. Collected in A Star Above It and Other Stories (NESFA Press, hardcover, 2003).

   Of the many SF writers of his day, Chad Oliver certainly had the credentials for the job. He had a PhD in anthropology from UCLA and was a fixture in that department at the University of Texas for nearly 50 years, including twice being chairman. He didn’t write a lot of science fiction, but as they say, what he did write was choice.

   My favorite of the nine novels he wrote, some of which were westerns, was The Winds of Time (1956), in which a race of aliens who came to Earth thousands of years in past decide to go into suspended animation to wait for a civilized mankind to evolve.

   “The Land of Lost Content” was Oliver’s first published story, and frankly, while certainly quite readable even today, it doesn’t show him at his best. The story line is unfortunately a very familiar one, that of a group of underground survivors of a nuclear and/or germ-based catastrophe on the surface of the Earth deciding generations later to break all of their dying society’s laws and see if they can make it to the land above.

   The last few lines sum it up: “Could they succeed where gods had faltered? He shook his head. Probably, almost certainly they would fail. But they would try. For that was what it meant to be a man.”

       —

Previously from this Lou Sahadi anthology: ROGER DEE “First Life.”

  DONALD WOLLHEIM, Editor, with Arthur W. Saha – The 1989 Annual World’s Best SF. Daw #783, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1989. Cover art by Jim Burns.

#8. FREDERIK POHL “Waiting for the Olympians.” Novella. First published in Asimov’s SF, August 1988. Reprnted in What Might Have Been? Volume 1: Alternate Empires, edited by Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg (Bantam, paperback, August 1988) and The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories, edited by Ian Watson & Ian Whates (Perseus, softcover, April 2010). First collected in Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories (Tor, hardcover, December 2005).

   In terms of his influence on the field, Frederik Pohl had a career in science fiction as long as almost anyone, one that lasted well over 70 years, first as a fan, then as an award-winning editor many times over, an agent, and yes, as a writer. He often had a wicked, satirical view of the world in much of what he wrote, and if you were to call that a subgenre of SF in and of itself, “Waiting for the Olympians,” would fit right into it.

   It’s told from the point of view of a hack SF writer named Julius — his friends call him Julie — and his latest work, for which he cannot repay the advance, is rejected because it makes fun of the Olympians, a collection of alien races sending representatives to Earth to invite the planet’s inhabitants to join their ranks.

   That something feels off about the early part of the story is made a whole clearer when Julie sits down to write a replacement novel with stylus and blank tablets. Tablets that stay blank because his head has run completely day of new ideas.

   His friend Sam (Flavius Samuelus) suggests that he write an “what if” story based on the premise that the Olympians are not coming, but Julie, hack writer that he is, simply can’t get his head around the idea at all. Then the unthinkable happens. Transmissions from Olympians suddenly stop completely, indicating that they have changed their minds and are really not coming. Why on Earth why?

   This is a very cleverly constructed story, with a lot going on between the lines, including the ending itself, which answers the question above, if only the Julie and Sam could figure it out, which they can’t, a devastating indictment of their world on both counts. An excellent story.

       —

Previously from the Wollheim anthology: TANITH LEE “A Madonna of the Machine.”

  LESTER del REY, Editor – Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Second Annual Edition. E. P. Dutton, hardcover. 1973. Ace, paperback, December 1975.

   #10. C. N. GLOECKNER “Miscount.” Vignette. First published in Analog SF, November 1972. Never reprinted.

   In his introduction to this story, Lester del Rey states his dislike for stories presented in the form of a diary or a series of communications (letters, emails, and so on) between two or more parties, but he decided to include this particular story as an exception to his rule.

   This one consists of a series of messages back and forth an operative for an alien salvage company and its headquarters, back wherever that may be. It seems that they picked up some discarded vacuum suits on the satellite of a planet of a developing culture in an area which was supposed to off limits.

   To correct their error and to stay out of trouble, they decide to replace them with facsimiles, but this serves only to make things worse. Read the title again, and you can easily figures out what goes wrong.

   This is short and cute, designed to give the reader a smile for just a moment before he or she moves on, but to include it in a Best of the Year anthology? Lester del Rey should have followed his basic instincts on this and said no.

          —

Previously from the del Rey anthology: VERNOR VINGE “Long Shot.”

  DONALD WOLLHEIM, Editor, with Arthur W. Saha – The 1989 Annual World’s Best SF. Daw #783, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1989. Cover art by Jim Burns.

   #7. TANITH LEE “A Madonna of the Machine.” Short story. First published in Other Edens II, edited by Christopher Evans & Robert Holdstock (Unwin, UK, paperback; no US publication). Collected in Forests of the Night (Unwin, US, hardcover, 1989).

   During her lifetime — she died in 2015 at the age of 67 — Tanith Lee produced perhaps 90 novels and over 300 works of short fiction. She came to my attention in a big way, along with lots of other SF and fantasy fans, with the publication of her “Birthgrave” trilogy, all paperback originals from DAW: The Birthgrave (1975), Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978), and Quest for the White Witch (1978).

   What struck me the most about these novels was how she was able to take what on the face of them were pulp-oriented sword-and-sorcery books and give them a solid science fictional background. This wasn’t revealed until the end of the first book, and it fair knocked my socks off.

   “A Madonna of the Machine” takes a standard SFnal idea — that of a dreary super-regulated future in which the inhabitants have no future — and creates a tale in which visions of a rose-angel-goddess begins to appear to several main characters. They have never experienced anything in their lives like this before.

   Told in a lyrical, poetic and eventually magical or even surreal style, style, the effect is almost that of a fantasy tale than science fiction. Tanith Lee was a master of this, and if she hadn’t written more stories than I could ever read, I’d love to have read more of them.

       —

Previously from the Wollheim anthology: KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH “Skin Deep.”

  LESTER del REY, Editor – Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Second Annual Edition. E. P. Dutton, hardcover. 1973. Ace, paperback, December 1975.

   #9. VERNOR VINGE “Long Shot.” Short story. First appeared in Analog SF, August 1972. Collected in True Names … and Other Dangers (Baen, paperback, November 1987) and The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (Tor, hardcover, November 2001). Reprinted several times, including Explorers: SF Adventures to Far Horizons, edited by Gardner Dozois (St. Martins, trade paperback, April 2000).

   Vernor Vinge not only writes the kind of SF I like to read, but he has won Hugos for three novels he’s written: A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999), Rainbows End (2006), as well as two novellas: Fast Times at Fairmont High (2002), and The Cookie Monster (2004). “Long Shot” didn’t win any awards, nor was it even nominated, but it’s a good one.

   For lack of a better word on my part, I’m going to call Ilse an A.I., although that may not be entirely true. She is female, that much is certain, so even though her brain is made of iron and germanium, laced with arsenic, the name Ilse fits her just fine.

   She is also the longest lived of all of Earth’s creatures “and perhaps the last.” Boosted into space and making a loop around the sun to gain acceleration, the ship she controls head off on a voyage lasting one hundred centuries and four light years.

   For what purpose? Although Ilse retains enough of her memory to make the minute changes in course to reach, Centauran system, by the time she nears the end of her voyage, she has forgotten the purpose of her mission, which of course is the entire point of the story. Which also when revealed to the reader, that very same reader will say “of course.”

   The math and the physics are only the clincher. This story is a prime example of hard SF at its finest.

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Previously from the del Rey anthology: DONALD NOAKES “The Long Silence.”