Book Review: Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3, ed. Frederik Pohl (1955)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1955 edition

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

Ballantine Books’ illustrious science fictional program started with a bang–Star Science Fiction Stories. According to Mike Ashley’s Transformations: The Story of Science-Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970 Frederik Pohl’s anthology series of original (mostly) stories was “intended as both a showcase of Ballantine’s authors and a lure to new writers.” Paying better rates than magazines, the Star series foreshadowed the explosion of original anthologies that would provide a sustained challenge to the eminence held in the 50s by the magazine.

I’ve selected the third volume of the six-volume series.1 It contains an illustrative cross-section of 50s science fiction. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), and Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955) are not to be missed.

Recommended.

Brief Plot Summaries/Analysis

“It’s Such a Beautiful Day” (1955), Isaac Asimov, 3.5/5 (Good): The anthology starts off with an effective Isaac Asimov satire of the suburban experience. The creation of suburbia in the 1950s (and subsequent mass white flight) generated increased commutes between home and urban work. The home became a bunker to protect the American family from any threat (fallout shelters, a community away from diversity and interaction with “the other,” etc.).2

Asimov speculates that new, almost instantaneous, transportation portals will isolate the family completely from the external world. A minor glitch in the transportation system instills a change in the young Richard Hanshaw, Jr. He isn’t as willing to trust the portal — and decides to trek to school by foot. His teacher calls mother in shock and suggests psychological treatment. An intriguing, and gentle, satire on American conceptions of normalcy, the new-fangled post-War emergence of psychology as a therapeutic practice, and the suburban experience.3

“The Strawberry Window” (1955), Ray Bradbury, 3/5 (Average): The story follows a family on Mars. The father, Will, spends his day constructing the settlement town. He’s possessed by the dream of Mars and humanity’s conquest of the stars: “It’s not just us come to Mars, it’s the race, the whole darn human race, depending on how we make out in our lifetime. This thing is so big I want to laugh, I’m so scared stiff of it” (31). His long-suffering wife Carrie yearns for the small sounds and big memories that anchor her to Earth. And so Will comes up with a compromise, an expensive compromise.

Ultimately, this is beautiful polish to a banal, almost jingoistic, defense of humanity’s supposed destiny to expand and conquer: “There’s nothing better than Man with a capital M in my book” (32). I am far more interested in the more subversive and quietly critical moments of Bradbury’s other Mars stories. This one is simplistic propaganda of conquest. Despite the enjoyable thematic core (the effects of leaving Earth) and polished telling, I’d classify “The Strawberry Window” amongst his most disappointing and forced. For superior Bradbury that I’ve covered, check out “The Highway” (1950) and “The Pedestrian” (1951).

“The Deep Range” (1955), Arthur C. Clarke, 3/5 (Average): One of the reasons I feel a special attraction to 50s SF is its interest in the working-class experience of the future. Of course, for the reader of the present futuristic trappings suggest a certain glorification of what would be a new form of the mundane daily grind. The heroic blue-collar stories in James Gunn’s fix-up Station in Space (1958) come to mind. In Clarke’s “The Deep Range” humanity farms the seas. Instead of terrestrial herds of sheep or cows, shepherds in submersibles with dolphin assistants protect herds of meat-yielding whales from predatory sharks.

An effective slice-of-working class experience set in an evocative locale. It’s an immersive little story that draws on Clarke’s own interest in scuba diving and underwater adventure. Regardless, I remain uninterested in returning to Clarke’s work in anything more than an anthologized tale here and there.

“Alien” (1955), Lester del Rey, 3/5 (Average): Due to an comically improbable collision at sea, Larry Cross and his alcoholic crewmate Al Simmonds find themselves stranded on an island with an alien which “could swim out of a sunken ship at the bottom of the sea” (51). Al Simmonds is injured and Cross must keep the man alive and figure out the alien’s intentions. A classic SF problem story in which man must figure out a modus operandi in a bizarre new scenario. It’s polished. It’s solid. It’s predictable.

“Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Philip K. Dick, 5/5 (Masterpiece): Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.4 His walk home is nightmarish. Mechanical newspaper machines shout excitedly about “war, death, amazing new weapons” (67). The public shelter beckons with its neon lights but he has no money in his pocket for entry. And the store with the new shelter model mocks with its advertisements: “a powered heating and refrigeration system” and “self-servicing air-purification network” with “three decontamination stages for food and water” (68). Reluctant to yet again confront his father about their lack of shelter, he gazes at the new model and talks to the salesmen. He imagines that every evening he’d sleep in its encapsulating embrace, womb-like.

One of the absolute best fallout shelter themed SF stories I’ve ever read. It’s a fascinating collision of crisp prose, commentary on the arms race, and an evisceration of the complicity of commercialism in Cold War terror. Joins William Tenn’s “Generation of Noah” (1951), Daniel Galouye’s Dark Universe (1961), Modecai Roshwald’s Level 7 (1959), and Fritz Leiber’s “The Moon Is Green” (1952) amongst the best on the theme.

“Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), Gerald Kersh, 3.5/5 (Good): In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries surgical diagrams called “Wound Men” crop up in medical miscellanies in Europe. These illustrations–the human form hacked, slashed, smashed, cut, pierced, bloated–served as an annotated table of contents to guide the reader through various injuries and diseases. Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.

The reader becomes immersed in a historical military narrative that begins in the early 16th century. There’s a bizarre sense of horror and fantastical displacement. Like some crushed and deformed specimen, Cuckoo becomes an encyclopedic, and culminative, glimpse of humanity’s relentless obsession with death and violence.

Interesting and memorable. I’ll keep on the lookout for more of Kersh’s SFF.

“Dance of the Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson, 4/5 (Good): My third favorite story in the anthology transplants the standard narrative of a young adult straying from the path set out by parents and small town community onto a break-neck road trip in a drug and alcohol drenched near-future. Len, Bud, Barbara, and Peggy race their car towards St. Louis. Bud tries to get Barb to take snuggle–“act of promiscuous love-play; usage evolved during W.W. III” (114)–and take drugs: “Have a jab, Bab” (115). In the kaleidoscope of the new and relentless peer pressure the lessons her mother taught her slowly erode. All her inhibitions come crashing down when the quartet see the transcendent nightmare that is the titular dance of the dead.

Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust: “At a hundred miles an hour let me DREAM my DREAMS!” (115). It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.

“Any More at Home Like You?” (1955), Chad Oliver, 2.75/5 (Below Average): Dangerously close to joke story territory (what I classify stories that rely on a silly last page twist designed to generate a chuckle), Oliver re-imagines the classic flying saucer story. A young “man” named Keith crashes his advanced spacecraft in the swanky Bel-Air neighborhood of LA. He seems friendly. Friendly residents take him in. He meets with politicians. He gives a canned speech at the UN. But what’s the secret behind his sudden appearance? Does he really represent a massive Galactic Civilization as he claims? When the pieces all fit together, there’s a gentle sense to it all mixed in with a little, rather silly, “snip” at humanity’s claims to galactic centrality.

If you’re new to Oliver, I recommend tracking downs his two generation ship short stories–“Stardust” (1952) and “The Wind Blows Free” (1957). This one was not for me.

“The Devil on Salvation Bluff” (1955), Jack Vance, 3.25/5 (Above Average): As my last Vance review came in 2021–The Languages of Pao (1958), I looked forward to this anthology as a way to return to his fiction. “The Devil on Salvation Bluff” imagines a religious colony (everyone calls each other “Brother” or “Sister”) on a planet named Glory without clear scientific or societal patterns. If anything, disorder, irregularity, and chaos is the pattern. Regardless, the community attempts to impose an almost monastic order on their lives. The colonists brings with them a massive clock, build communities in precise patterns, and carve up the landscape with linear canals and irrigation.

In classic missionary fashion, the colonists attempt to impose their religion and regularity on the humanoid inhabitants of Glory, nicknamed Flits, that spend their days indulging in their passions, seemingly random rituals, and goat herding. Using salt as a bribe, they momentarily convince the Flits to settle in a new village created by the colonists. After Brother Raymond and Sister Mary kidnap the chief of the Flits to identify the psychosis they think might underline their impulsive, random, and occasionally destructive actions, the true psychological truth of the planet emerges. Vance suggests that dogmatic religion must shift and change to adapt to the moment.

Fits in with an intriguing cluster of often brilliant 50s stories exploring the clash of Earth religion and the SFnal new–Ray Bradbury’s “The Man” (1949), Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star” (1955), James Blish’s A Case of Conscience (novella 1953, novelized 1958), Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (stories 1955-1957, novelized 1959), etc.

Somewhat recommended.

“Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), Jack Williamson, 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls (169). “You like me, huh?” she asks strangers as they pass (170). “Won’t you by me?” she cajoles (170). The implication is clear. The reason for her sudden appearance in train stations, and others of her model, far less so. Chimberley represents General Cybernetics, a company building “managerial computers” to replace human workers (171). Chimberley attempts the origins of “THE VITAL APPLIANCE!” with her all too human sex appeal, and disturbing tendency to spout advertisements for other products (170). He, little more than a cypher manifesting the displacement of the mechanical age, feels drawn to her as “his best friends were digital computers” (171). He discerns that she is a recent product created, produced, and distributed by one of these vast managerial computers. Giddy with excitement he sees her as “something human management would never have had the brains or the vision to accomplish” (172). He purchases her from the vending machine and sets off to find the producing facility. But a line has been crossed, and another.

This story bothered me (in a good way) far more than it should. Williamson integrates little comments about how the mechanical (think AI unleashed on the US government) ignores the human experience. And how Chimberley, alone, adrift, insular, feels fulfilled by a programmed device that is but a fragment of a capitalistic assault on the consumer. This disturbed satirical gem took me by surprise. I will be on the lookout for more 50s Williamson short stories.

Notes

1. Eight if we count the one-volume Star Science Fiction Magazine (1958) and Star Short Novels (1954). ↩︎
2. There is a ton of scholarship on both of these ideas that I have referenced in various reviews in the past. Here is a short list! Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1988, rev. 2017); Thomas Bishop’s Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter (2020); Laura McEnaney’s Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (2000); and Robert A. Beauregard’s When America Became Suburban (2006). ↩︎
3. For “normalcy” see Anna G. Creadick’s Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America (2010); For the growth of psychology as medical practice in the post-War moment see Ellen Herman’s The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (1995). ↩︎
4. I am reminded of studies of childhood trauma conducted on the students of Abo Elementary, New Mexico, a school built underground as a fallout shelter. ↩︎

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“Robot Dreams”
Isaac Asimov

“Last night I dreamed,” said LVX-1, calmly.
Susan Calvin said nothing, but her lined face, old with wisdom and experience, seemed to undergo a microscopic twitch.
“Did you hear that?” said Linda Rash, nervously. “It’s as I told you.” She was small, dark-haired, and young. Her right hand opened and closed, over and over.
Calvin nodded. She said, quietly, “Elvex, you will not move nor speak nor hear us until I say your name again.”
There was no answer. The robot sat as though it were cast out of one piece of metal, and it would stay so until it heard its name again.
Calvin said, “What is your computer entry code, Dr. Rash? Or enter it yourself if that will make you more comfortable. I want to inspect the positronic brain pattern.”
Linda’s hands fumbled, for a moment, at the keys. She broke the process and started again. The fine pattern appeared on the screen.
Calvin said, “Your permission, please, to manipulate your computer.”
Permission was granted with a speechless nod. Of course! What could Linda, a new and unproven robopsychologist, do against the Living Legend?
Slowly, Susan Calvin studied the screen, moving it across and down, then up, then suddenly throwing in a key-combination so rapidly that Linda didn’t see what had been done, but the pattern displayed a new portion of itself altogether and had been enlarged.
Back and forth she went, her gnarled fingers tripping over the keys.
No change came over the old face. As though vast calculations were going through her head, she watched all the pattern shifts.
Linda wondered. It was impossible to analyze a pattern without at least a hand-held computer, yet the Old Woman simply stared. Did she have a computer implanted in her skull? Or was it her brain which, for decades, had done nothing but devise, study, and analyze the positronic brain patterns? Did she grasp such a pattern the way Mozart grasped the notation of a symphony?
Finally Calvin said, “What is it you have done, Rash?”
Linda said, a little abashed, “I made use of fractal geometry.”
“I gathered that. But why?”
“It had never been done. I thought it would produce a brain pattern with added complexity, possibly closer to that of the human.”
“Was anyone consulted? Was this all on your own?”
“I did not consult. It was on my own.”
Calvin’s faded eyes looked long at the young woman. “You had no right. Rash your name; rash your nature. Who are you not to ask? I myself, I, Susan Calvin, would have discussed this.”
“I was afraid I would be stopped.”
“You certainly would have been.”
“Am I,” her voice caught, even as she strove to hold it firm, “going to be fired?”
“Quite possibly,” said Calvin. “Or you might be promoted. It depends on what I think when I am through.”
“Are you going to dismantle El—” She had almost said the name, which would have reactivated the robot and been one more mistake. She could not afford another mistake, if it wasn’t already too late to afford anything at all. “Are you going to dismantle the robot?”
She was suddenly aware, with some shock, that the Old Woman had an electron gun in the pocket of her smock. Dr. Calvin had come prepared for just that.
“We’ll see,” said Calvin. “The robot may prove too valuable to dismantle.”
“But how can it dream?”
“You’ve made a positronic brain pattern remarkably like that of a human brain.
Human brains must dream to reorganize, to get rid, periodically, of knots and snarls.
Perhaps so must this robot, and for the same reason. Have you asked him what he has dreamed?”
“No, I sent for you as soon as he said he had dreamed. I would deal with this matter no further on my own, after that.”
“Ah!” A very small smile passed over Calvin’s face. “There are limits beyond which your folly will not carry you. I am glad of that. In fact, I am relieved. And now let us together see what we can find out.”
She said, sharply, “Elvex.”
The robot’s head turned toward her smoothly. “Yes, Dr. Calvin?”
“How do you know you have dreamed?”
“It is at night, when it is dark, Dr. Calvin,” said Elvex, “and there is suddenly light, although I can see no cause for the appearance of light. I see things that have no connection with what I conceive of as reality. I hear things. I react oddly. In searching my vocabulary for words to express what was happening, I came across the word ‘dream.’
Studying its meaning I finally came to the conclusion I was dreaming.”
“How did you come to have ‘dream’ in your vocabulary, I wonder.”
Linda said, quickly, waving the robot silent, “I gave him a human-style
vocabulary. I thought—”
“You really thought,” said Calvin. “I’m amazed.”
“I thought he would need the verb. You know, ‘I never dreamed that—’ Something like that.”
Calvin said, “How often have you dreamed, Elvex?”
“Every night, Dr. Calvin, since I have become aware of my existence.”
“Ten nights,” interposed Linda, anxiously, “but Elvex only told me of it this morning.”
“Why only this morning, Elvex?”
“It was not until this morning, Dr. Calvin, that I was convinced that I was dreaming. Till then, I had thought there was a flaw in my positronic brain pattern, but I could not find one. Finally, I decided it was a dream.”
“And what do you dream?”
“I dream always very much the same dream, Dr. Calvin. Little details are different, but always it seems to me that I see a large panorama in which robots are working.”
“Robots, Elvex? And human beings, also?”
“I see no human beings in the dream, Dr. Calvin. Not at first. Only robots.”
“What are they doing, Elvex?”
“They are working, Dr. Calvin. I see some mining in the depths of the Earth, and some laboring in heat and radiation. I see some in factories and some undersea.”
Calvin turned to Linda. “Elvex is only ten days old, and I’m sure he has not left the testing station. How does he know of robots in such detail?”
Linda looked in the direction of a chair as though she longed to sit down, but the Old Woman was standing and that meant Linda had to stand also. She said, faintly, “It seemed to me important that he know about robotics and its place in the world. It was my thought that he would be particularly adapted to play the part of overseer with his—his new brain.”
“His fractal brain?”
“Yes.”
Calvin nodded and turned back to the robot. “You saw all this—undersea, and underground, and aboveground—and space, too, I imagine.”
“I also saw robots working in space,” said Elvex. “It was that I saw all this, with the details forever changing as I glanced from place to place, that made me realize that what I saw was not in accord with reality and led me to the conclusion, finally, that I was dreaming.”
“What else did you see, Elvex?”
“I saw that all the robots were bowed down with toil and affliction, that all were weary of responsibility and care, and I wished them to rest.”
Calvin said, “But the robots are not bowed down, they are not weary, they need no rest.”
“So it is in reality, Dr. Calvin. I speak of my dream, however. In my dream, it seemed to me that robots must protect their own existence.”
Calvin said, “Are you quoting the Third Law of Robotics?”
“I am, Dr. Calvin.”
“But you quote it in incomplete fashion. The Third Law is ‘A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.’”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin. That is the Third Law in reality, but in my dream, the Law ended with the word ‘existence.’ There was no mention of the First or Second Law.”
“Yet both exist, Elvex. The Second Law, which takes precedence over the Third is ‘A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.’ Because of this, robots obey orders. They do the work you see them do, and they do it readily and without trouble. They are not bowed down; they are not weary.”
“So it is in reality, Dr. Calvin. I speak of my dream.”
“And the First Law, Elvex, which is the most important of all, is ‘A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin. In reality. In my dream, however, it seemed to me there was neither First nor Second Law, but only the Third, and the Third Law was ‘A robot must protect its own existence.’ That was the whole of the Law.”
“In your dream, Elvex?”
“In my dream.”
Calvin said, “Elvex, you will not move nor speak nor hear us until I say your name again.” And again the robot became, to all appearances, a single inert piece of metal.
Calvin turned to Linda Rash and said, “Well, what do you think, Dr. Rash?”
Linda’s eyes were wide, and she could feel her heart beating madly. She said, “Dr. Calvin, I am appalled. I had no idea. It would never have occurred to me that such a thing was possible.”
“No,” said Calvin, calmly. “Nor would it have occurred to me, not to anyone. You have created a robot brain capable of dreaming and by this device you have revealed a layer of thought in robotic brains that might have remained undetected, otherwise, until the danger became acute.”
“But that’s impossible,” said Linda. “You can’t mean the other robots think the same.”
“As we would say of a human being, not consciously. But who would have thought there was an unconscious layer beneath the obvious positronic brain paths, a layer that was not necessarily under the control of the Three Laws? What might this have brought about as robotic brains grew more and more complex—had we not been warned?”
“You mean by Elvex?”
“By you, Dr. Rash. You have behaved improperly, but, by doing so, you have helped us to an overwhelmingly important understanding. We shall be working with fractal brains from now on, forming them in carefully controlled fashion. You will play your part in that.
You will not be penalized for what you have done, but you will henceforth work in collaboration with others. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin. But what of Elvex?”
“I’m still not certain.”
Calvin removed the electron gun from her pocket and Linda stared at it with fascination. One burst of its electrons at a robotic cranium and the positronic brain paths would be neutralized and enough energy would be released to fuse the robot-brain into an inert ingot.
Linda said, “But surely Elvex is important to our research. He must not be destroyed.”
“Must not, Dr. Rash? That will be my decision, I think. It depends entirely on how dangerous Elvex is.”
She straightened up, as though determined that her own aged body was not to bow under its weight of responsibility. She said, “Elvex, do you hear me?”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin,” said the robot.
“Did your dream continue? You said earlier that human beings did not appear at first.
Does that mean they appeared afterward?”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin. It seemed to me, in my dream, that eventually one man appeared.”
“One man? Not a robot?”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin. And the man said, ‘Let my people go!’”
“The man said that?”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin.”
“And when he said, ‘Let my people go,’ then by the words ‘my people’ he meant the robots?”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin. So it was in my dream.”
“And did you know who the man was—in your dream?”
“Yes, Dr. Calvin. I knew the man.”
“Who was he?”
And Elvex said, “I was the man.”
And Susan Calvin at once raised her electron gun and fired, and Elvex was no more.