Back to weekend book reviews (here are the threepreviousreviews). This week's review is of an anthology that is hot off the presses and therefore isn't one that I have reread (yet) but I'm reviewing it because I know perfectly well that I will be rereading it again and again. As with almost all the "books" I buy recentedly I have not bought this book in paper form but as an eBook, somehow I suspect it is a real doorstopper of a book, and it is to my advantage that in electronic form it fits nicely in my laptop library for the current trip to Japan.
The World Turned Upside Down edited by David Drake, Eric Flint & Jim Baen
This anthology started in the course of a conversation I had with Jim Baen regarding possible future prospects for reissuing old science fiction authors. In the course of advancing this or that idea, Jim interrupted me and said what he'd like to see immediately would be for Dave Drake and myself to select those stories which had the most impact on us as teenagers and got us interested in science fiction in the first place. "Call it The World Turned Upside Down," he said.
...This does not purport to be an anthology that contains "the best stories of science fiction"—although all of us think this volume contains a superb collection of stories. But that was not the fundamental criterion by which we made our selection. The stories were selected because of the impact they had on us several decades ago, as we were growing up in the '50s and '60s.
As a boy growing up some twenty years later I can say that those of the stories that I read then that occur in this anthology were just as influential on me and a further twenty odd years later having read the rest I can say that the whole lot is good stuff. It has holes, some of which are due to space and copyright issues, and of course it has stronger and weaker tales but as an introduction to Science Fiction you could do far, far worse than read this book.
The stories in the anthology are as follows: Rescue Party by Arthur C. Clarke The Menace from Earth by Robert Heinlein Code Three by Rick Raphael Hunting Problem by Robert Sheckley Black Destroyer by A. E. Van Vogt A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber Thy Rocks and Rills by Robert Ernest Gilbert A Gun for Dinosaur by L. Sprague de Camp Goblin Night by James H. Schmitz The Only Thing We Learn by C. M. Kornbluth Trigger Tide by Wyman Guin The Aliens by Murray Leinster All the Way Back by Michael Shaara The Last Command by Keith Laumer Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Quietus by Ross Rocklynne Answer by Fredric Brown The Last Question by Isaac Asimov The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin Shambleau by C. L. Moore Turning Point by Poul Anderson Heavy Planet by Lee Gregor Omnilingual by H. Beam Piper The Gentle Earth by Christopher Anvil Environment by Chester S. Geier Liane the Wayfarer by Jack Vance Spawn by P. Schuyler Miller St. Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson Thunder and Roses by Theodore Sturgeon
As I said above I cannot say that I liked all the tales, in fact the Jack Vance annoyed as, in some ways, did Christopher Anvil's "The Gentle Earth" and "Spawn". That doesn't mean that I don't think they don't deserve inclusion, more that they are in my opinion less good than some of the others. On the other hand a couple of the others that are worth the price of the lot in my opinion will no doubt annoy others who like different things.
Despite the wide variety of authors, styles and the different decades that the stories were written all have in some way the same slightly "old fashioned" view. It exhibits itself in the dialogue, which reminds me of Hollywood B movies, in the science which is frequently a bit wacky, and in the characters who tend to be, at least at the beginning of the tales, rather one dimensional and frequently in the pre-feminist attitudes. It is rather like looking at the black and white photos of one's parents or grandparents. I recall L Ron Hubbard saying something similar in the introduction to Battlefield Earth, which is probably the only Hubbard book I have enjoyed reading and which exhibits quite a few of the faults that he (accurately) lists in his contempories. None of this is totally bad as the plots and particularly the way that the stories make you look at the world differently compensate and more for these deficiencies in the writing.
I'm not going to review each story in turn but I will I think highlight the tales that I particularly enjoyed. Of the ones I had read and forgotten but greatly enjoyed rediscovering two stand out - Murray Leinster's "The Aliens" and "A Pail of Air" by Fritz Leiber. Of the ones that I knew all along and still like the Heinlein and Tom Godwin's famous Cold Equations are absolute tops but John W Campbell's "Who Goes There?" keeps on bugging me even though there is something about it that rubs me the wrong way. I think the story that I had never read before but makes me most likely to seek out the rest of his work is H Beam Piper's "Omnilingual" but CL Moore's Shambelau and Rick Raphael's Code Three get honourable mentions. I'd head of Moore and Piper before but have never (consciously) read either, I had never even heard of Rick Raphael but I'll see if I can't find something more by him too, even though I suspect finding such will prove difficult. Perhaps I should avail myself of Glennis' Missing Volume...
Indeed I would say the biggest thing about this book is that it introduces the reader to authors that he would othersie not read and reminds him of others that he read once or twice and then forgot. The problem for this reviewer is that he is not often in places with large second hand book stores which are of course the perfect places to browse and find other books by the authors in this one, but for those readers who live within striking distance of such a resource this book will act like the pirate's map marking the buried treasure.
In terms of what is missing without a decent excuse, I think the largest holes are the lack of Colin Kapp and John Wyndham. John Wyndham is probably most famous for his "Day of the Triffids" but he wrote a lot of other works and many of them, such as Chocky, stand up well to the passage of nearly half a century since they were written. I read Kapp's "Unorthodox Engineers" repeatedly as a child and it had more influence than most tales on my world view, unflortunately I've lost the book now and I deeply regret that loss. I suspect that Kapp, like Rick Raphael and some of the others in this anthology are destined for undeserved obscurity, despite their excellent story telling ability. Somehow I suspect that these are only going to be rediscovered once copyright laws are revised so that these out of print stories can be reprinted without the need to track down the copyright owners and negotiate for the requisite permission. However that is well beyond the subject of this review which concludes with a wish that the process be repeated perhaps using other editoris (hey Jim if you're reading this consider me) and other time periods.