Book Review: New Tales of Space and Time edited by Raymond J. Healy
This 1951 anthology opens with an introduction by Anthony Boucher. In it he notes the proliferation of science fiction anthologies at the time, most of which were reprints of magazine stories. Often the same stories, over and over–not bad because they are frequently the best stories of the time, but because you already had multiple copies. This collection, by contrast, was all bespoke stories for the particular volume (the best of which have been anthologized multiple times since.) Also notable was that the editor focused on a “positive” attitude for the stories, none being completely hopeless downers. Mr. Boucher also points out that some of the stories (including his own) could not have been printed in magazines at the time.
“Here There Be Tygers” by Ray Bradbury starts us off with a rocketship landing on a welcoming planet. A planet that may be too welcoming, as it grants the desires of the men who have come there. One of the men is deeply suspicious of a trap, and for him there are tigers. The sexism is pretty deep on the ground here, as though it’s centuries in the future, the crew is all male, and the planet is thought of as having a feminine personality. The suspicious man even says he wants to rape the planet before it can trick him into letting down his guard. (He also accuses the planet of having a masculine core under its female outer clothing.)
That said, a civilization that thinks of alien worlds as only resources to be plundered might not be one we should support.
“‘In a Good Cause–‘” by Isaac Asimov introduces a statue of a man named Richard Sayama Altmayer, the base of which is inscribed with three sets of dates. They are the times he spent in prison. Flashing back, we learn that Altmayer was a conscientious objector. He refused to serve in a war against another human star nation, preferring to work for unity. A unity like the one enjoyed by the alien Diaboli. His best friend Geoffrey Stock had accepted the draft and urged Altmayer to do the same, but Altmayer refused to do so and thus went to prison.
Over the years, the two men clash over their different philosophies as Stock rises in the military and government, while Altmayer is repeatedly imprisoned for his political actions. At long last it’s revealed that Stock had his own plan for human unity and eventual peace all along, but there’s a reason Altmayer has a statue and he doesn’t.
It’s an interesting look at principles vs. pragmatism.
“Tolliver’s Travels” by Frank Fenton and Joseph Petracca starts in 1951 Hollywood. Sam Tolliver is a screenwriter whose life is…decent. He has steady work, a family and home. But the world is not what it should be. Poverty, war, crime…children who won’t pick up their toys…couldn’t things be better, somehow? Happier? Then Sam runs into a man at the golf club bar who claims to have serial immortality as a curse, and sends him two hundred years into the future.
The future is a much happier place. War and poverty have been abolished. Technological advancements abound. Problem! Happiness is mandatory. Can Sam find the man who sent him here and escape before he’s made happy forever? Very much a “be careful what you wish for” story.
“Bettyann” by Kris Neville involves a baby that is orphaned in an automobile accident that also paralyzes her left arm. She’s adopted by a loving couple from a small town in Missouri, who give her the title name. Bettyann grows up in a mostly normal way with mostly normal small incidents. But she’s different from the other children in a way she cannot either identify or understand.
Eventually, her birth parents’ people come for Bettyann and she learns what that difference truly is. The strangers insist that Bettyann must come with them, but does she really fit their way of life either?
This is a long, slow burn story. Aside from some odd dialogue and a bit of special effects in the first scene, one would not guess it was science fiction until near the end. It’s not a great story, but I found it satisfying with the question of nature vs. nurture. Notable: Because Bettyann has never had the use of her arm, she usually doesn’t consider it a handicap, but there’s one moment where she uses this as an attack to drive away a boyfriend in a fit of self-pity.
“Little Anton” by Reginald Bretnor is part of the “Papa Schimmelhorn” series. Papa Schimmelhorn is an octogenarian eccentric genius clockmaker who speaks with a vaudeville German-Swiss accent and has an eye (and hands) for the ladies. There are two threads to the story. First, Papa Schimmelhorn has been forcibly retired from his job at the Luedesing Time and Instrument Corporation of New Haven as he apparently botched the production of a new sensor for the Navy. Second, he needs to pick up his teenage nephew Little Anton Fledermaus from Ellis Island.
Little Anton learned his English from American gangster movies, and it’s possible also some of his lack of moral compass. He possesses the ability to warp space-time to a dimension “around the corner” which he uses to among other things smuggle dirty postcards and see through women’s clothing. (He is, after all, a teenage boy.)
Papa Schimmelhorn is certain he can solve the sensor thing with a little help from his old friend Albert, but that fellow is out of town, so to kill time, Papa takes Little Anton to Atlantic City for a vacation. Along the way, they pick up a couple of spies, one of whom is an attractive woman who Anton says has a tattoo of a cuckoo on her belly. She tries to worm info about the sensor out of Papa Schimmelhorn by appealing to the masculine urge to infodump about science, not realizing that a) Papa Schimmelhorn does not in fact have a coherent grasp of science and operates by intuition and b) just wants to see her with less clothes on because science is not something girls should be interested in. It ends badly for the spies.
Papa Schimmelhorn and Little Anton on the other hand return in triumph, except for one tiny detail.
It’s a humorous story but one that has aged badly. The “funny immigrant” subgenre has lost its luster over the years, and Papa Schimmelhorn’s behavior towards his female coworkers is considered unacceptable even by 1951 standards. Your mileage may vary on the “use superpowers to peep on women” thing.
I did enjoy minor character Captain Perseus Otter, who is described as having an uncanny resemblance to Admiral Nelson–as drawn by a particularly cruel French political cartoonist. And despite his rank, he’s never been allowed on a Navy ship as his family have a long tradition of service…and losing their ships.
“Status Quondam” by P. Schuyler Miller has Simon MacIvor, geologist and formerly attached to a Greek guerrilla group during World War Two, get frustrated with modern society. Having a classical education, he has decided that the best period to live in is Greece around the time of Pericles. And as it just so happens, he has a time travel belt!
Or rather, had a time travel belt, as he loses it a few minutes after arriving near ancient Athens. Our protagonist suffers a few more setbacks, but eventually manages to talk his way into a lucrative job at the silver mines.
While he does quite well for himself, MacIvor finds he’s not so keen on life in Ancient Greece after all. The slavery is bad enough, but he’s also homophobic. Despite telling himself “it’s just their culture” our protagonist freaks out some when he’s propositioned by a male prostitute. It’s time to find that belt and dive back to 1951, but the Temple of Poseidon isn’t going to make that easy!
“B+M–Planet 4” by Gerald Heard takes us to the planet Mars, where the first successful landing has been made by an Earthling. Despite what you may have been told, Mars is a land of milk and honey. The local humans took a different turn millennia ago. Instead of wasting mass on muscles and size, they entered into symbiosis with their planet’s bees. And now they’re ready to spread the good news to Earth. This story’s kind of freaky, and seems more like a late Sixties tale than an early Fifties one.
“You Can’t Say That” by Cleve Cartmill has an unlikely hero. Wayne Chambers is in charge of the West Coast office for censorship of cables to Eurasia. He blocks the passage of one message that looks like code. It turns out to be a chess problem, which he didn’t recognize because Wayne doesn’t play chess. Turns out there’s a new chess club that’s scattered around the world sending each other these chess problems.
Okay, fine, but it’s a bit odd how much pull the chess club representative seems to have. And the office chess player mentions that given the positions in the problem, white should be able to mate in one, not two moves. Wayne “corrects” the cable to reflect that.
When he checks a chess book out of the library, he’s set upon by muggers that beat him and steal the book. Then Wayne is fired from his job for no apparent reason. Hmmm….
Naturally, Wayne uses his contacts and cunning to investigate. He uncovers the truth, and the day is saved, but the story has a bit of a dilemma to it. Yes, the censorship office caught the clues to stop the problem…but the problem would never have existed without the conditions causing censorship!
“Fulfillment” by A.E. van Vogt starts in the far future, as an artificial intelligence that calls itself “the Incomplete One” sits alone on a hill. It does not remember why it exists, why it is on this hill, or exactly how long it has been there. It knows that it was used in the past to answer questions that required great computational power, but not anything about those that asked the questions. It wants to know, it wants to be fulfilled.
Suddenly, a time traveler from the distant past arrives several miles away. It is a more primitive artificial intelligence, that seems frightened by the Incomplete One, and refuses to answer the future computer’s questions. The newcomer retreats into the past. The Incomplete One cannot for some reason it is unaware of initiate time travel, but it is able to latch onto the other’s ability to pull itself into the same time period.
This turns out to be more or less our present day, where scientists and engineers are creating what they hope will be the first artificial intelligence, but don’t know how advanced it in fact already is. The Incomplete One begins its campaign to complete itself using the other intelligence. But since it has gaps in its memories, it may not fully understand the human element.
As it happens, the humans don’t fully understand each other, so there’s a subplot about two of them realizing their feelings.
“The Quest for Saint Aquin” by Anthony Boucher closes out the volume with what might seem a dystopia to some readers. The Technarchy rules the Earth and forbids all religions. And yet there are still Christians, and a pope. That pope sends Thomas, a priest in mufti, to search for the hidden tomb of Aquin, who won converts to the faith with his preaching, and who supposedly does not decay. Thomas is assisted by a robass, a robotic beast of burden that proves to be far more talkative than expected.
References to the stories of Balaam and the Good Samaritan are made, and eventually Thomas comes to the tomb and learns the secret of Aquin. It would seem a crushing blow, but yet there is still hope.
It’s a striking story that I remember vividly from other collections. A good strong finisher.
Overall, a strong lineup of writers, and a good variety of stories. Some aspects have aged poorly, but the better stories can be found in more recent collections. You may be able to find this in good used bookstores.
