Book Review: The Pocket Book of Science Fiction edited by Donald A. Wollheim
In the introduction to this 1943 anthology, Donald A. Wollheim talks about “the theory of outrageous hypotheses” which helps science progress by asking, “this is not true but what if?” These ten stories are most assuredly fictional, but point to places to explore.
“By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benet takes place in a post-apocalyptic New York State as a young priest goes on a vision quest which brings him to the ruins of a great city. It’s a story that reads simultaneously as eerily prescient (it very much seems like a post-atomic war scenario) and old-fashioned. I was surprised to learn it was as recent as 1937 because of the stately quality of the wording.
John, son of John, learns that the dead gods were but men, and that he can walk in the City of the Gods and not die. But he also realizes that he needs to be careful how he uses this knowledge, and learn from the mistakes of the past.
“Moxon’s Master” by Ambrose Bierce starts with two men discussing whether machines can think. The question is still unsettled at the story’s end, but it’s established that machines can certainly kill. Perhaps Moxon should have installed a “gracious loser” program in his chess automaton.
“Green Thoughts” by John Collier is a morbid tale about a plant collector who acquires a new species of orchid that has disturbing properties. He discovers too late how the plant feeds, but that’s not the end of the story. One of those rare tales where the bad guy wins.
“In the Abyss” by H.G. Wells takes us below the surface of the ocean in a deep-sea diving bubble. Elstead is down far too long and comes up a considerable distance from where he should have surfaced. When he returns, Elstead raves about a civilization on the ocean floor, one that is by no means human. I’m fairly certain H.P. Lovecraft read this story.
“The Green Splotches” by T.S. Stribling recounts an expedition to a remote valley in the Andes, the Valle de Rio Infiernillo. The place has an evil reputation, and none of the natives will willingly go anywhere near the valley. So two condemned prisoners are pressed into service as guides with the prospect of freedom if they survive.
Naturally, the expedition goes horribly wrong, almost as much due to the arrogant preconceptions of the explorers as to the danger that lurks in the valley. They probably should have turned back when they saw the human skeleton strung up.
There’s a long section at the end where it’s explained “what really happened’ which stops the story dead, but is essential for the final joke. And the ending raises a question for me. The danger in Valle de Rio Infiernillo is in fact of recent origin. How did the valley originally get its fearsome reputation?
“The Last Man” by Wallace G. West is a grim tale of the evil consequences of equality for women. As women gained a place in the workplace and in leadership roles, men became less and less active. When women discovered artificial reproduction, men became redundant. Now there remains only one man, a genetic anomaly thrown up by the birthing vats.
M-1 lives in a museum, carefully preserved for the curiosity of tourists. He is mostly resigned to his fate, but resents it. What he doesn’t know is that he’s not the only genetic anomaly alive, and she’s coming for him.
The sexism is strong with this story.
“A Martian Odyssey” by Stanley G. Weinbaum takes place on Mars, as the first Earth expedition almost loses a man. When he returns, he has a wild tale to tell. This is one of the all-time great stories of science fiction, as it introduced Tweel the Martian. Tweel’s an exercise in creating an alien that is as intelligent as a human, but doesn’t think like a human. There’s also some imaginative ideas for other alien life forms.
The ending is perhaps not the best example if we want to argue that Earthlings should not be shot on sight on other planets.
“Twilight” by Don A. Stuart (pen name of John W. Campbell) has a man telling his friend about the hitchhiker he picked up, and that man’s strange tale. It turns out the hitchhiker is a time traveler from the fairly far future, who wound up in the “present day” while escaping from the very far future.
Kenlin reports that he’d gone too far, to a point where the human race has exhausted itself and is dying out, slowly dwindling among the machines of their ancestors they no longer understand. This is an autumnal story, and sad if you believe in eternal progress. But perhaps not so sad if you think of the millions of years that humans had a pretty good run.
“Microcosmic God” by Theodore Sturgeon has two awful people in it. One is biochemical engineer James Kidder, who creates an artificial tiny sentient race he calls the Neoterics which live at hyperaccelerated rates. He sets himself up as their god and does horrific things to make them advance their civilization so that he can set them to inventing things.
The other is banker Conant, who realizes that the misanthropic Kidder isn’t paying attention to the outside world, and hatches a plan to use Kidder’s scientific toys to take over the world. But Conant hasn’t figured out that his plan has a single failure point.
“…And He Built a Crooked House” by Robert A. Heinlein finishes the volume with a tale of California architecture gone horribly right. Q. Teal builds houses, and he has an idea for one that’s a tesseract (a cube extended into the fourth dimension.) He can’t literally do that, but can design a house that’s like an unfolded tesseract.
Until he shows it off to the new owners during an earthquake and…something…happens that folds the house into a true tesseract. Can they escape before another earthquake destabilizes the tesseract into a new configuration? This comedic tale is one of the two places most SF fans learned about tesseracts, the other being A Wrinkle in Time.
The Weinbaum and Stuart stories are the ones I liked best; “The Last Man” has issues that severely date it, and the Stribling story ending is too clunky.
Most of the stories have been reprinted elsewhere, some extensively. This volume is a bit rare, so is more for the collector than the casual fan.
