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.

#3. JOHN SHIRLEY “Shaman.” Novelette. First published in Asimov’s SF, November 1988. Not reprinted elsewhere.

   John Shirley’s science fiction falls largely in the cyberpunk genre, but he’s also written award-winning horror fiction, movie tie-in’s (Alien, Batman) and as John Cutter, many books in the long running men’s adventure series “The Specialist.”

   “Shaman” takes place in a very dystopian future Manhattan, as four young adventurers, Quinn, Chico, Bowler and Zizz, decide to take on the impossible task of rescuing their friend Deirdre from the Fridge, a “wall-to-wall biomonitoring facility” in which the prisoners are completely restrained “on IV medifeeds and spinebox.”

   Their path, as it happens, must go through the area controlled by the Funs (Muslim Fundamentalists), a tricky venture at best, and success is far from guaranteed. Along the way, many strange things happen, and Quinn in particular learns a lot about himself and the world he lives in. (The word ‘strange’ is an understatement here.)

   This bare-bones outline of the plot does not do justice to its colorful if not outright mystical telling. If words fail me, they certainly don’t John Shirley. Even if I don’t follow all of the foursome’s adventures completely, I certainly enjoyed the ride.

   What follows is a brilliant melange of psycho-drugs, pseudoskins capable of transmitting continuous porno shows on one’s body, and the basic setting of people all around the world in a panicked search for a sense of community through basic tribalism.

   And there is the moral to the tale. “… there were a thousand million people using all of civilization’s technology without understanding it; the children of the new illiteracy, living electronics the way a Cro Magnon had used fire; assuming it was magic.”

   It’s difficult to imagine Donald Wollheim, whom I think of as being a staunch defender of traditional science fiction, picking this over-the-top cyberpunk tale as one of the Year’s Best, but I’m glad he did.

       —

Previously from the Wollheim anthology:   STEVEN GOULD “Peaches for Mad Molly.”

NORMAN DANIELS “The Great Ego.” Novella. First appeared in Startling Stories, Spring 1944. Never reprinted.

   The first story by Norman Daniels I ever read was one of his John Keith, Man from A.P.E. spy stories from Pyramid. I didn’t know who Daniels was at the time and knew nothing of his pulp connection, but I knew I liked the book enough to look for more by him, which proved fairly easy to do as he was an extremely prolific writer for most of his entire career, from his early days in the pulps to the Gothic romances written with his wife as Dorothy Daniels. The only trick with his work was discovering which pseudonyms he was writing under other than his own name, and which genre he was writing in.

   But I confess I never really thought of him much in terms of the Science Fiction genre, which is why I was a bit surprised to see his name on the cover of Startling Stories with the lead novella illustrated by no less than the great Virgil Finlay, the work in question, “The Great Ego.”

   The story, as you might expect from Daniels and Startling, opens with a hook designed to keep you turning pages. The extremely meek and retiring Mr. Rodney St. George (…in manner of dress he might be almost dainty) is a clerk at a bank, and his superior, young and handsome Jim Downing, has asked Miss Pam Brooke, an attractive clerk at a rare book store, to identify St. George as a man who buys rare volumes at her store.

   Two marked notes, part of a large sum embezzled by a recently caught clerk named Foster, one who definitely would not be found in a rare book store, showed up at her store. To make things even more mysterious, it turns out the meek Mr. St. George has spent some $8,000 on rare books in recent months. This is certainly not a sum he earned at the bank no matter how carefully he lived.

   Like any pulp hero worth his name, Jim Downing is determined to investigate more deeply, something he soon finds he wishes he kept his nose out of. But before he can follow up, Mr. St. George foils a bank robbery, apparently by accident. Asked to identify the captured bank robber, St. George visits his cell, where magically a cute kitten appears just as the bank robber who had pleaded with St. George to free him drops dead, much the same way the embezzling clerk Foster did, from no apparent cause.

   There is much more to Mr. St. George than meets the eye, and he is ready for Jim Downing’s nosing around.

   Meanwhile Pam Brooke has been doing a little detective work on her own. She has discovered St. George has spent thousands of dollars in rare bookstores around the city. So when Downing goes to visit St. George he suspects there is more to the story than he’s been told and willing to confront the man. At which point St. George turns him into a kitten and himself into a large black cat.

   Of course Daniels manages to give the whole thing a thin patina of science since this was Startling Stories and not Weird Tales, but basically this is the sort of thing you would find in John Campbell’s Unknown, though told here with a straighter face and without the more literary efforts of a Heinlein, Leiber, De Camp, or Williamson.

   St. George can turn anyone into any animal, but he prefers cats, and his house full of cats, all former humans (including Foster and the bank robber), but he needs Downing because it turns out St. George isn’t the only one with this power. He has a rival, a deadly one, Dr. Michael Jamison.

   Downing manages to become human and escape, but no one will believe him but Pam, so he tries to enlist Jamison only to find himself ironically allied with St. George against an even madder scientist/sorcerer, the two men vying for an ancient scroll that will make one of them a virtual god.

   This fast-moving tale has a momentum of its own, despite the absurdities and proves to be a fun story as Downing and Pam find they are mankind’s last hope as the two self proclaimed gods feud with man’s fate in the balance.

   Daniels manages a nice bit of jiggery-pokery here, keeping the tale moving despite the built-in absurdity, and even allowing the hero to outwit the two madmen with a clever bit of observation about the nature of their abilities, bringing the thing to a fine apocalyptic head.

   â€œThe Great Ego” is a well-written and playful tale, one that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but still seriously enough to involve the reader in the fate of the attractive hero and heroine, if you are willing to give into the spirit of the thing.

   Startling may not have been in a class with Astounding, but over the years it was the home to some of the more gifted writers in the field, including Leigh Brackett, Stanley Weinbaum, Manly Wade Wellman, Ray Bradbury, Edmund Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, (Captain Future, too) and other major names, and in “The Great Ego” an unquestioned pulp — if not SF — master pulls off an entertaining tale as wild and furry as the cats that populate it.

  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.

#2. STEVEN GOULD “Peaches for Mad Molly.” Novelette. First published in Analog SF, February 1988. Nominated for both the Hugo (2nd) and Nebula Awards.

   Another author whose work this is the first time I’ve read. Looking ahead at the rest of the Wollheim anthology, that is going to be a very common thread connecting these stories. Gould is best known for his popular series of “Jumper” novels, books for Young Adults about a teenager who is able to teleport from one place to another.

   As for this story, some time in the Earth’s future, it is presumed, many (if not most) of the planet’s inhabitants live in apartment buildings two kilometers tall. Some who do not, and there are a few, live on the outside of the buildings, much like the homeless people of today live on sidewalks under bridges.

   Some do so by choice, however, either for a sense of independence or the thrill of adventure. Such a one is the unnamed narrator of this story, a man who climbs up and down the outside of the building using ropes and grapples and with a whole lot of flair. On the occasion of Mad Molly’s birthday, he decides to surprise her by going down and fetching her some fresh peaches. It means, however, crossing the floor 520 to 530, claimed by the Howlers as their territory.

   This is a very picturesque tale, and it has a huge amount of visual appeal, but when it comes down to it, our hero is the same person at the end as he was the beginning. One new friend, perhaps, and a lot of dead enemies, both of which I concede are all to the good.

   But what, if I dare ask, is the difference between this story and a western in which the hero must cross a territory claimed by the Comanches to find a store on the other side that carries and sells peaches. Peaches wanted by a dear old lady who would like to be surprised by some?

          —-

Previously from the Wollheim anthology:   DAVID BRIN “The Giving Plague.”

GEORGE HARMON COXE “Murder Picture.” Novelette. “Flash” Casey #8. First appeared in Black Mask, January 1935. Reprinted in The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, edited by Otto Penzler (Vintage Crime, softcover, November 2007).

   The count above is of Casey’s story appearances in Black Mask. The first novel he appeared in didn’t come out until 1942 when Silent Are the Dead was published by Knopf in hardcover.

   I imagine quite a few of you already know that Casey was a news photographer and that he was sometimes also known as “Flashgun.” He was a rough-edged kind of guy, though. He may have been the only news photographer who carried a gun — not all the time, mind you. Only when the occasion called for it, and that it definitely does in this story when his assistant named Wade is kidnapped by a gang of thugs as a means of getting their hands on a photograph Casey has taken.

   There are too many people in the story, both good and bad, and not many who are in-between. We don’t get to meet the girl Wade is soft on, however, one who Casey thinks is up to her neck in the criminal activities the people she works for are involved with, and that’s too bad, as she’s the only whiff of a feminine presence anywhere in the story.

   I confess that I didn’t (couldn’t) follow the plot all that well, but I didn’t have to in order to enjoy all of Casey’s fast-thinking maneuvers he uses to learn where Wade is being held, and from there on, it’s fast-paced action all the way.

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

   #5. FREDERIK POHL & C. M. KORNBLUTH “The Meeting.” Short story. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1972. First collected in Critical Mass by Frederik Pohl & C. M. Kornbluth (Bantam, paperback, 1977. Co-winner of the 1973 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

   Most science fiction readers of his era considered Cyril Kornbuth to be of the most gifted writers of them all — myself included — and considered his early death in 1958 at the age of 34 to be an absolute tragedy. He was known largely for his short fiction, starting at the age of 15, but before his death he wrote two novels on his own, plus several more in collaboration with others. “The Meeting” was a story that was finished by Frederik Pohl, working from notes Kornbluth left behind.

   A married couple named the Vladeks have a young boy with severe developmental disabilities, and they have just moved to a new town to find a school specializing in students like him. Most of the story takes place during the first PTA meeting of the year, after which Mr. Vladek has a brief moment to talk to the principal about how nine-year-old Tommy is doing. His wife had to stay home, as Tommy has too many emotional issues to be left with a baby sitter.

    What makes this a science fiction story comes very nearly at the end. There is a possibility that an experimental brain transplant procedure will solve Tommy’s problems, but a decision has to be made right away. The story ends with Mr. Vladek reaching for the telephone to tell the doctor what they’ve decided.

   I don’t think anyone has had any doubt what that decision was going to be. This is a very sentimental, old-fashioned story — the portion that Kornbuth wrote was written in the 50s, after all, with Pohl finishing and polishing it up in 1972. It’s a good, well-structured story and was awarded a Hugo at the time, but I don’t believe it would today.

          —

Previously from the del Rey anthology: ISAAC ASIMOV “The Greatest Asset.”

  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.

   #1. DAVID BRIN “The Giving Plague.” Short story. Interzone, Spring 1988. Also reprinted in Full Spectrum 2, edited by Lou Aronica et al. (Doubleday, hardcover, 1989). First collected in Otherness (Bantam, paperback, 1994). Nominated for a Hugo (2nd place).

   I may have missed one, but I believe that David Brin has won three Hugos and one Nebula award. The complete list of his nominations and other wins fills two or three pages of my computer screen on the ISFDb website. And yet, and I’m not sure why, this is the first work of his I’ve ever read, long or short.

   I read most of the science fiction magazines in the 60 and 70s, but by the time the 80s came along, I kept buying them, but I just wasn’t reading them any more. The same was true for novels — not only Brin’s — and even more so. I don’t think I’ll ever catch up on all the novels, but by taking my “Best of” anthologies out of storage and making my way through them, my hope is that I can finally read what was considered the Best at the time.

   I found “The Giving Plague” to be a strange one. It’s filled with to the top with scientific information that since it deals primarily with viruses and the way they spread, most of the diagrams and other details went way over my head, zip zip zip. But not only does Brin know his science, he also has the ability to explain it at a high enough level that it all makes sense to the reader, or seems to.

   And enough so that when he hypotheses a new kind of virus, one that’s called ALAS for short (Acquired Lavish Altruism Syndrome) and which propagates itself through blood transfusions by making people enjoy giving, it goes down awfully easily. This is what I think you’d agree is a Brand New Idea, and the story Brin builds from here is an awfully good one, well told.

   I don’t think I’ll be reading any of Brin’s novels right away — I’m too far behind for any hope of that — but his shorter work? Yes, indeed. I was impressed by this one.

      —

Note:   In the same way that I’ve been working my way through Lester del Rey’s 1972 Best of the Year anthology, I thought I’d do a parallel investigation of what Donald Wollheim thought were the best stories of 1989, and see what a difference 17 years make. So far one thing sticks out, a minor one and maybe only important to me, but I’m a lot less familiar with the authors, sometimes even their names.

DAVID GOODIS “The Blue Sweetheart.” Novelette. First published in Manhunt, April 1953. Published as a Kindle eBook by Peril Press, November 2013.

   The setting may be different, but the milieu and the predicament of the hapless hero of this novelette from the legendary digest Manhunt, is pure David Goodis, the poet of the down and out, the hopeless, and the lost. You may know him best from his novels or the films made from them (Dark Passage, Nightfall, The Burglar, The Burglars …), but chances you know him as the author of grim down to the bone tales that could give Cornell Woolrich a run for their doomed kismet haunted protagonists.

   What you may not know is Goodis also had a good run in the pulps, particularly in the aviation pulps. Aside from his fatalistic novels he also wrote tales of adventure and intrigue, and this novelette from Manhunt is much closer to those works than his better known novels, though hints of those works can’t help but slip in.

   Not that Clayton, the protagonist of this tale, would feel out of place beside the doomed heroes of most of Goodis novels. As the story opens he is in a very shady bar in a foreign port knowing simply leaving will likely cost him his life, and the back story is no prettier about Russ Hagen, a brutal power that be in Colombo who stole Clayton’s woman and fortune in gems and booted him out of Ceylon a year earlier.

   Now Clayton is back, his fate seemingly sealed, all because of Alma who had laughed with Hagen as Clayton lay beaten and bleeding at Hagen’s feet, and because of a large sapphire, the “blue sweetheart” of the title which is Clayton’s hope for redemption and revenge.

   Cast this one in the movie of your mind as you will, Glenn Ford, Rita Hayworth, and George Macready (Gilda) or Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, and Brad Dexter (Macao), this is the familiar adventure tale of countless pulp stories filtered through a film noir lens and peppered with a certain shabby hopeless elegance unique to Goodis voice and gift for painting unforgettable word images:

   And this little exchange when he sees Alma again for the first time in a revealing dress standing in his bedroom and it all comes back to him:

   It’s hard not to see that one in cinematic terms.

   â€œThe Blue Sweetheart” is no classic, and it reads with an easy familiarity, but it also hits all the right notes, a perfect jazz rift played with ultimate skill from a well worn Fake Book by a master whose fingers almost autonomously caress the keys with grace and style.

   Muted horns playing, gradual fade …

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

   #3. GORDON EKLUND “Underbelly.” Short story. First published in Worlds of If, September-October, 1972. First collected in Retro Man: Selected Stories, Volume Two (Ramble House, trade paperback, 2016).

   Author Gordon Eklund broke into the the ranks of professional science fiction writers in a big way. From his Wikipedia page:

   Between 1971 and 1980 he had some 16 novels published, then except for one novel in 1989, he and his writing virtually disappeared from view. I really shouldn’t speculate in print, but in cases such as this, it is often that contracts dried up and/or he decided to keep his day job.

   As for “Underbelly,” it reads like the first chapter of a much longer book. Why Gabriel Solar, living in an vaguely established post-apocalyptic village, is chosen to be the subject of a b experiment designed to enhance the physical powers of living beings conducted by two scientists with two differing approaches, working in a well-guarded compound nearby is only partially referred to.

   Even less clear is what will happen to Gabriel once he’s been given the gift of physical perfection. Can he return to his home where he’s now superior to everyone, making the rest of his life a very uncertain one?

   Which of course is the point. I’d like to read the rest of the story, though — the part that follows this one. My first reaction was that it could have been a lot more interesting than the snippet we’re given here — but then again perhaps not. Thinking about it later, I decided that just maybe what Eklund gives us in “Underbelly” is all we need, allowing us to fill out the rest of the story on our own.

   Conclusion: While not perfect by any means, this is a better story than I thought it was when I first read it.

       —

Previously from the del Rey anthology: ROBERT SILVERBERG “When We Went to See the End of the World.”

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

   #2. ROBERT SILVERBERG “When We Went to See the End of the World.” First published in Universe 2, edited by Terry Carr (Ace, paperback, 1972). First collected in Unfamiliar Territory (Scribner, hardcover, 1973). Reprinted many times. Nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, 1973.

   Picture a cocktail party taking place in 1972, or perhaps in the near future from that time, for time travel on a commercial basis exists and is just becoming affordable for the kinds of swinging couples who attend such parties as this. Marijuana, free love, and the discussion of various current disasters around the world are all part of the scene, as well as a little not-so-subtle one-upmanship are all going on.

   In the latter regard, as it turns out, everyone who’s signed up for and has taken a trip to see the apocalypse — the end of the world — has a totally different tale to tell. This is very puzzling, and it helps mitigate the sense of loss each couple feels when they discover that they weren’t the first kids on the block to have taken the trip after all.

   I can’t say that the explanation they come up with is on solid ground. What kind of scientific basis could there be for it? For the reader, though, the interesting part of the evening is how they all manage to ignore the fact that the world is already falling apart around them — with all kinds of scenarios as to which particular disaster may befall them. And for sure, that’s the point.

   What I generally find in Robert Silverberg’s stories, and this one’s no different, is that there is something hidden in each of then that’s never spoken aloud or so stated in the story itself. An undercurrent that you sense that’s not really there, but it is. Or maybe I just imagined it, but this time around I don’t think I did.

   Have I mentioned that this is a funny story, well told? If I haven’t, then I just did.

       —

Previously from the del Rey anthology: LARRY NIVEN “Cloak of Anarchy.”