Book Review: A Treasury of Science Fiction edited by Groff Conklin
“A Treasury of Science Fiction” was first published as a hardback in 1948; the edition I read was the paperback reprint from 1957 which only contains eight of the original thirty stories. This was one of the first major science fiction collections, and set the stage for many more.
“Rescue Party” by Arthur C. Clarke begins this volume with an alien starship learning of the existence of intelligent life on Earth–hours before the planet will be destroyed by its star going nova. It’s a razor-thin hope, but it’s their duty to try to save at least some inhabitants, if they can find any. Curiously, it appears humanity has already vanished, and one of our automated machines means the rescue party itself needs rescue! And then comes the twist ending.
“Juggernaut” by A.E. van Vogt is set during World War Two, when it was written. (All the stories in this volume were written either during or very shortly after the war.) The Americans discover a new steel alloy that’s indestructible and start building weapons out of it. Surely this will win the war for the Allies. Except that there’s a side effect that becomes more and more obvious over time, and the war may be over in a different way.
“With Folded Hands” by Jack Williamson is a chilling tale, and the best story in this volume. A man that owns a small town android dealership is already struggling when a new type of mechanical servant opens up business. Androids require a lot of human supervision for any complex task (such as setting the table), but the new Humanoids are in no need of such instruction. In fact, they’re better than humans at practically everything, and they’re so polite and humble! Who wouldn’t want a Humanoid?
Our protagonist, for starters. He doesn’t like the way the Humanoids just insert themselves into his family’s life and start remodeling the house. The doors are rebuilt so that humans can’t open them, because the Humanoids don’t think humans should have to go through the effort when a Humanoid can do that for them.
Eventually, the protagonist learns that the Humanoids were created on a planet that had suffered atomic war, as a way to help the humans there recover and have war no more. But the Prime Directive is “To Serve and Obey, and Keep Humans from Harm” with the latter being the most important bit. Indeed, obedience quickly goes out the window whenever the human wants to do something that might harm them. Like shave themselves, or play sports, or read a book with disturbing ideas…and if you’re unhappy about that, the Humanoids have learned ways of fixing bad thoughts.
The fact that the Humanoids are depicted as naked black people with “blind” eyes is probably not entirely symbolic, but is suggestive. Note that the novel The Humanoids that this story was eventually turned into is substantially different.
“The Great Fog” by H.F. Heard has a new mildew appear and spread; a meteorologist notices an interesting but tiny rise in humidity everywhere it appears, but his warning that this might be a serious problem is ignored. Soon enough, the entire world is blanketed in a never ending fog; the old civilizations collapse, but humanity survives.
“Mimsey Were the Borogroves” by Lewis Padgett is the other truly classic story in this volume. A scientist who’s invented a time machine needs a payload for it so that he can study the changes when the payload comes back to learn more about the time period it was sent to. He sends two boxes with random assortments of his son’s educational toys; neither returns and he abandons the experiment.
One box winds up in the possession of Scott Paradine, an intelligent and inquisitive seven year old. Being a halfway decent big brother, he shares his new toys with his two year old sister Emma. But the future is a different place, and the education these toys give is not the one their parents might have wanted. We learn that the other box of toys fell into the possession of a girl named Alice, but she was already too old, and only her wild tales shared with a certain author survived.
By the time the Paradine parents take the toys away, it may already be too late. There’s a place the children have to find, not of the present Earth.
“The Ethical Equations” by Murray Leinster is set in a future where the Space Patrol has become hidebound, and only political pressure has gotten them out to investigate a strange object entering the solar system. It turns out to be an alien spacecraft, with the crew in suspended animation. What is the ethical thing to do? What is the right thing to do? Are they the same thing? A lot of technobabble here.
“It’s Great to Be Back” by Robert A. Heinlein has a couple of lunar colonists throw in the towel and head back to Earth for the things like fresh air they’ve been missing. It looks semi-realistically at the issues someone who’s gotten used to lunar gravity would have adjusting to Earth gravity again. The “backwards small town” segments have aged less well, a reminder of just how much technology has caused social change even in the remotest regions.
“Loophole” by Arthur C. Clarke (yes, two stories, and this was before he became one of the most bankable SF writers!) has the Martians decide that they don’t want the Earthlings coming to the red planet with their atomic weaponry. So they blockade Sol 3 with battleships and insist that humans give up rocketry. The humans find a loophole.
Overall, a good representative collection of state of the art science fiction as of 1948. I’ve indicated my favorites, but the Clarke stories may appeal more to the “humans are special” fans. It hasn’t been reprinted in decades, but most of the stories have been collected in other anthologies so should not be hard to find.
“The Last Mimzy” movie is loosely inspired by the Padgett story, so let’s have that trailer:
