This is a story hedged in by death, the constant threat of death inherent in the storys vision of space travel. (It was published five years after the first, and for a long time the only, NASA fatalities.) Its protagonist is the lone biologist sent to do an initial survey of a far-flung planet .... and it less about the alien world it is set upon and more about being human and the longing for connection. I wish I could be less vague about it, but I will not spoil the moment of putting all the pieces together. (I had to read the story twice to get from 'a nagging sense that something odd is going on' to seeing each piece fit together.)

Ive seen no discussion of this story online and Id love to talk about it, or any of the stories in this anthology, here.

"Thus Love" is MacLennans second published short story in her 17 year publishing career, which included six short stories and one novel (the out of print Turned Loose on Irdra.) Since that novel was published before this anthology, I have to guess that the editor's introduction refers to research on a second never-published, novel. As with T. J. Bass I hope this slight output is not the result of discouragement and disillusionment, the world of this short story alone could support a novel - it is both evocative and concrete. (i.e. There is no more information than the reader needs, yet one believes it holds further possbilities and wider vistas.)

There are some mythological references in this story: the planets name Deirdre fits with the storys title, the survey ships name is Latin for mage or wizard, and the name of Deirdres sun, Selina, brings to mind Greek mythologys Seline, and another tale of love and mortality.

(While the anthology spells the author's name with an 'o', most online sources spell it with an 'a'.)

This finishes The 1973 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald Wollheim with Arthur Saha. (The anthology was dedicated to the memory of John 'Ted' Carnell, the British SF author and editor who had died the year before.) Next time Ill begin reading an anthologies of stories and essays called Daughters of Earth: Feminish Fiction in the 20th Century.

-LV

This is one of the few SF stories I can think of that's based on problems and speculations from Computer Science rather than the traditional hard sciences. (Although some Engineering and Astrophysics do enter into it.) This makes sense: Vernor Vinge is a CS Professor and it is difficult to know where to begin in saying more about him - so much else has been written about him and I could fill up the length of this entry with link after detailed and well-written link about him. (See below!) His published work spans the mid-60s through the present.

'Long Shot' is a relatively early story (1972), but the problems it is based on hold up well. (I can think of plenty other computer-based SF that might as well print its decade (or half-decade) on a neon sign.) Vinges story is also an interesting exploration of the thought process of an AI (rather than a human adapted to run a space ship as in Anne McCaffreys The Ship Who Sang) and how damage to an AIs system or software would affect that very throught process. (Just as organic damage to the brain affects the human abilities and consciousness.)

I wont spoil the surpise in this story, it's a series of such intriguing 'hows' that one forgets to ask 'why', and it is also a meditation on the feminine characterization of ships: an AI has no intrinsic gender. (Arguments about stereotypes and essentialism can be added to our upcoming discussion of Daughters of Earth, an anthology of feminist SF. ;)

Big List O' Links:

Web Page: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/

Audio: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail711.html

Bio: http://www.answers.com/topic/vernor-vinge

Works: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ch.cgi?Vernor_Vinge

Awards: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/eaw.cgi?Vernor_Vinge

Interview: http://www.farsector.com/quadrant/interview-vinge.htm

Salon Article: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/04/05/vinge/

Observer Article: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,865638,00.html

An Appreciation: http://mindstalk.net/vinge/

Another Appreciation: http://members.aol.com/tishede/vvinge.htm

More Background: http://www.kurzweilai.net/bios/frame.html?main=/bios/bio0007.html?

A Coversation on His Work (including this story):
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.heinlein/browse_thread/thread/8d47b88e5da202c3/28ad96840d93f2a2?lnk=st&q=%22Vernor+Vinge%
22&rnum=19&hl=en#28ad96840d93f2a2

More Background: http://www.scifan.com/writers/vv/vingevernor.asp

Conversations about Vinge and SF:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_thread/thread/b995a33b96c8a6bd/2c5b0a00870cd9a1?lnk=st&q=%22Vernor+Vinge%
22&rnum=54&hl=en#2c5b0a00870cd9a1

CoolTime Sink *kof* Resource: http://www.literature-map.com/vernor+vinge.html

Next time, the final story of the anthology, one by Phyllis MacLennan.

Yours,
LV

Ive been reading Simon Winchesters Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883, prompted by a vague memory of the book The Twenty-One Balloons. Winchesters book has a great more geology than Id anticipated (but, alas for du Bois fans, no diamonds) - and it takes the book five chapters to get to the Boom.

(Note: 'Boom, sooner or later. BOOM' - Commander Ivanova, Babylon 5)

Second note: it was heard nearly 3,000 miles away (as contemporary science writer E. M. Aaron explained, this would be like hearing the noise of a Philadelphia explosion in San Francisco.) According to Winchester no technologically-produced sound in the 20th or 21st century has equalled it.

Winchesters book also brought to mind another flight of fancy, by direct mention:

It is said that Byron composed his most miserable poem, 'Darkness' - Morn came and went-and came and brought no day-under the influence of that dismal year [after the eruption]; and Mary Shelley may have written Frankenstein while gripped by a similarly unseasonable melancholy.

You be the judge:

By the quantity of provision which I had consumed, I should guess that I had passed three weeks in this journey; and the continual protraction of hope, returning back upon the heart, often wrung bitter drops of despondency and grief from my eyes. Despair had indeed almost secured her prey, and I should soon have sunk beneath this misery. Once, after the poor animals that conveyed me had with incredible toil gained the summit of a sloping ice mountain, and one, sinking under his fatigue, died, I viewed the expanse before me with anguish....

(I though at first that the final, ice-bound section of the book referred to sunsets like the ones Krakatoa produced, but not so, only the mood of disaster and cold ...)

Spragues Browsing collection has all the books mentioned, except for The Twenty-One Balloons - for that youll have to go to Honnolds Special Aviation collection. (Honest! :D Check it in Blais.)

Yours,
LV

What if you had the power to change history? What if you had the power to do it and promote a bit of cultural justice - to take the unjustly obscure and nudge their opportunities one way or another or catch them right at the moment where they were going to take the glum fork in the road?

This story has somewhat the feel of "All You Zombies" or The Left Hand of Darkness, the same sense of the power of change and the same doubts about whether one person (no superhuman) can bring it about. (Like "All You Zombies" it is about time travel, like Left Hand of Darkness it is about how out-of-place advanced technology does (and doesnt) make a difference.)

The fact is we all have that power (and those doubts): over the present, over ourselves, and over all we come into contact with. This is a story for anyone who has ever loved something from the past: a book, a movie, a piece of music, a live recording, a work of art. This is a beautifully written story infused by that love, and with the cluelessness and foreknowledge that winds through LeGuins and Heinleins two works. I recommend it highly.

"Willies Blues" was published in the May 1972 issue of The Magazine of SF&F. It is mentioned in Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction by Paul Nahin. Its author, Robert J. Tilley, is a musician, artist, and author. He has published one novel, The Big Losers (now out of print) and many mystery and SF short stories. There has never been an anthology of Tilleys work, although he has published since 1957 (scroll down): http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/authorsT.html

Yours,
LV

Next time: a short story by Vernor Vinge.

'Changing Woman' is about a Jicarilla Apache-Navaho woman and a Blackfoot bush pilot who go to work for a secretive organization in the forestland near Cape Mendocino, CA.
This story, like the first one in this anthology, also derives its inspiration from mythology.

To say more would spoil what happens.

Next time, a story by Robert J. Tilley.

Yours,
LV

I was recently trying to describe to a friend how Fantasy is different from other types of fiction. I finally concluded that Fantasy uses the same kind of ethical thinking that fairy tales do .... in the Grimm fable, we know there will be consequences when the heroine washes and tends the three bloody heads and others who pass them do not. The same chill of foreboding does not attend a mystery novel detectives refusal to help a stranded motorist - the outcome could be neutral, or ironic, or it could contain a clue - but mystery is not the same genre (and does not happen in the same kind of universe) as Fantasy does and the rules are different.

Science Fiction isnt the same, I thought to myself .... but most of the SF I can think of is about the implications and consequences of technological change or scientific discovery. SF functions as a conscience in how we apply science .... sometimes the things it fears are or unlikely or unfounded (or in the case of skiffy, silly) but a lot of SF seems to ask, 'Wait, is this a good idea?'

At the same time I was mulling all this over a new book crossed my desk: Jez and I had decided to buy Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia for Sprague. The publishers web page looked promising, and the the author, Brian Stableford, is a well-known SF author (although there is no replacing Asimov for this kind of undertaking), but I asked to look at the book to see if it was really as promised.

Science Fact surveys how scientific discovery and science fiction have influenced each other, how each has opened new vistas for the other. The encyclopedia is heavy on the science (linguistics, exobiology, zoology, archaeology) and modest (but well-chosen) in its coverage of SF authors (Niven, Verne, Clarke.) I was immediately pleased that I couldnt evaluate most of the articles with my meager 101-level science education and I will be delighted to hear your responses to the articles that touch on what you know.

(One article I could evaluate, 'Mars' discussed the excitement created by Pietro Seccis 'canali', Mars as the setting of late 1800s fictional paradises and utopias, H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom, the pulp era, Bradburys Mars, the 1960s era real-world push to send piloted craft to Mars, the disappointment created by the Mariner and Viking data that showed a harsher Mars than had been anticipated, and how Mars as a dead planet influenced later SF (including visions of a terraformed Mars or modified humans.) SF reacted to these trends and ongoing Martian discoveries - with the occasional SFnal return to the old hope that Mars had sustained life. (The most recent fiction cited is from 2002 - so one wonders what recent reevaluations of water on Mars will do to future SF.) It is a thorough article with a broad acquaintance with SF - I couldnt think of a work it omitted and it mentioned several Id never heard of or had half-forgotten. (*kof* I need to re-read Wells.))

Other articles I sampled looked equally good and I recommend the rest of the book highly.

Science Fact even considered the very topic Id been mulling:

[In fiction] .... [t]he author not only has the power to determine on whom the rain falls, and when, but the authority to state without objection why characters do what they do. There is far less restriction on what can be stated in words than there is on what can happen in the world of experience, and fiction is therefore flexible in ways that the world of experience is not .... It is not only possible for the sun and the rain to discriminate between the just and the unjust, but perfectly routine .... Whereas science cannot deal with moral order, fiction must.

As soon as Jez persuades me to stop reading the book, you can find Brian Stablefords Science Fact and Science Fiction on Spragues 1st Floor under -

SPR REF FOL
Q
123
S735
2006

Yours,
LV

"To Walk a Citys Street" is a story told almost completely as dialogue. Its plot is centered around a simple moment of realization that turns the entire premise upside down; its the kind of elegantly simple SF story that would usually be told by a scientist, but instead is given to the people who know least. (This is a common theme in SF - but it is difficult to pull off without confusing the reader. At moments this story reminded me of Tiptree's "Screwfly Solution" although that story (as much feminist SF does) exploits the confusion,* deliberately, i.e. the opening scene of LeGuins The Left Hand of Darkness.)

* Tiptrees story is narrated by a scientist, a technique that usually lets the author be laser-direct about the ideas in a story. In a genre thats often about ideas authors have to find ways around knowledgeable characters making a storys *entire* point in a single, neutron star-dense paragraph of exposition. :P

"Citys Street" was written by Hugo-winning author Clifford D. Simak, best remembered for his award winning "Grotto of Dancing Deer." The best thing about this story is the way it is written. His absolutely clear and lucid style no doubt came from his background as a journalist. This story is like a windowpane and I did not miss the a bit of absent stage-setting or description. (There are no clues about date or geography, but there is no sense of "white room" to this story at all.) Simaks publishing career spanned from 1931 to 1997. (Although he died in 1988.) His works.

It so happens that this short story was filmed for TV:
http://imdb.com/name/nm0089756/bio
(I am curious what they did with it since it is nearly a screenplay as written - although there are no descriptions of fashions, buildings, characters, or locations. A filmmaker would have to make all the decisions about setting and era (and decide whether to invent background and exposition to add to this lucidly minimal tale.))

An extensive appreciation of Simaks work:
http://trikacommunications.com/simak/welcometothewaystation.htm

I read Cliff's stories with particular attention, and I couldn't help but notice the simplicity and directness of the writing - the utter clarity of it. I made up my mind to imitate it, and I labored over the years to make my writing simpler, clearer, more uncluttered, to present my scenes on a bare stage. - Isaac Asimov

Next time a story by T. J. Bass. Who? Further info: http://www.strangewords.com/archive/bass.html

-LV

One of the pleasures of 'The Gold at the Starbows End' lies in its surprises (and its lapses into poetry.) I dont recommend googling it before you read it - and I dont wish to spoil much of it, myself. Ill only say this is a fine tale of the first manned trip to Alpha Centauri and of human potential at its best - and worst.

The author of this story, Frederik Pohl, was an established and accomplished writer by the time this story appeared. (It was the cover story for Analog in March 1972.) A Nebula Grand Master, he had been publishing since 1932 and has been both an SF editor (Galaxy, If) and a SF literary agent. (His works and awards are too many to count.)
He continues to publish and appear at cons.

(The editor of this collection comments that 'Starbow' should win the Hugo and Nebula: in fact it was nominated for both but lost to the novella 'The Word for World is Forest' by Ursula K. LeGuin, and 'A Meeting with Medusa' by Arthur C. Clarke, respectively. Pohl won that year for 'The Meeting.')

An Interview with a good warning against fixing an unpleasant habit to ones work:
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue240/interview.html

Why political themes are important in this story and his other work:
http://www.tor.com/pohl/interview.html

Official Bio: http://www.frederikpohl.com/

Next time, a story by Clifford D. Simak.

-LV

He published his first novel in 1972, so this short story is a very early work of his. It is one of those tales whose setting is SF but whose plot and dialogue come from another genre: this is a story about vendetta, prejudice, personal hatred, a kind of cut-throat espionage. The SF setting is original: I cant think of many SF works that start from arctic marine biology. The story also has an interesting take on 'space madness' - how humans may adapt to being alone in large, empty, isolated environments. I recommend it, even though I like my aliens more alien and prefer my SF to permeate more than a pieces setting.

An Interview with Coney: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/Camelot/intrvws/coney.htm

An Appreciation by John Clute: http://tinyurl.com/zyzw2

A Remembrance by The Lonely Cry: http://www.lonelycry.ca/mconey.html

Next time: a short story by Frederik Pohl.

-LV

James Tiptree, Jr. was the pen name of Alice Sheldon, a Major in the Army trained in interpreting intelligence photos taken from the air. She also had a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology and worked for the newly-formed CIA. She wrote SF, won awards, and signed letters and books under her male pen name -- keeping her secret so carefully that her identity would not be known until 1978, after ten years of writing. Her biography and her accomplishments were so conventionally male (and much of her short fiction was such a fine and exacting parody of the machismo common in then-contemporary SF) that Robert Silverbergs brief biography of Tiptree in his introduction to the story "A Momentary Taste of Being" did not blink at calling Tiptree "a man of middle years." (p. 88 The New Atlantis ed. Silverberg, also part of the Sprague Browsing collection.)

(Although I wonder, as others have, if signing herself 'Tip' (instead of 'James' or 'Jim' or 'Tiptree') was a reference to Ozma of Oz -- if you dont understand this why, then please read L. Frank Baum's second Oz book. (You dont have to have read the first one to understand it, except for the world it is a completely independent book.) The Oz books were the Harry Potter books of their own day, and in the right time for Tiptree of have read them herself as a girl.)

This anthology contains one of Tiptrees early stories, 'The Man Who Walked Home.' It first appeared in Amazing Science Fiction Stories in 1972; Tiptree started publishing in 1968. This story is an unusual mix of pastoral post-apocalypticism and time travel gone wrong (or is that 'gone right'?) It discusses magical thinking vs. science and is fundamentally optimistic about human nature: it is the first post-apocalyptic work Ive read in a long time that was disquieting but not depressing.

You can read an appreciation of Tiptree’s legacy in Ursula K. LeGuins book of essays called The Language of the Night. There is also a new biography of Alice Sheldon called: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips.

Tiptrees legacy is honored by an award in her name: http://www.tiptree.org/

-LV

-LV

Poul Anderson (SFWA Grand Master 1997) is remembered for his wide ranging science fiction and fantasy works covering several serieses and a multitude of independent novels and short stories. He had a degree in physics but was also a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. He won several awards throughout his long career, and Sprague Library has his 1972 Nebula Award winning (and 1973 Hugo Award winning) novelette Goat Song, a frequently anthologized story of his, which first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in February of 1972.

The phrase goat song is the English translation of the Greek word tragedy. Andersons story alludes to two other, older stories (one of them a tragedy) in order to tell its tale: the story of Thomas the Rhymer and the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. (Thomas the Rhymer is also alluded to in Pamela Dean's novel Tam Lin.) This is appropriate, as one of the themes of Andersons story is whether humans have any further need for art and mythology in setting where a rational computer decides everything. (It also talks about how religious beliefs are used to sustain the authority of this type of government: the computer is given authority over death because it promises a future cybertronic resurrection.) The story involves a poet, a meeting with a powerful woman, a journey to another world -- and a plea that someone be returned from the dead.

I recommend it, it's an sf story that feels like the best of modern fantasy.

Next time I'll cover an early story by James Tiptree, Jr.

-LV

http://www.scifi.com/transcripts/1999/DavidFeintuch.html

A selection of posts where he discusses his own work:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_thread/thread/a7fd9816f6c2a6f9/75b54b2690d9aad5?hl=en#75b54b2690d9aad5
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_thread/thread/20d12681cf0590ce/d2da73cf7acf5524?hl=en#d2da73cf7acf5524
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_thread/thread/20d12681cf0590ce/32d5bb3823fc33a0?hl=en#32d5bb3823fc33a0
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_thread/thread/74ea460cb1d6780a/9342d34691165229?lnk=st&q=&rnum=8#9342d34691165229
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_thread/thread/db5267123dceef9f/441f312a9f5a9da2?lnk=st&q=&rnum=1#441f312a9f5a9da2

Obit from The Independent:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.obituaries/browse_thread/thread/638502c8f9749447/24063bc7209a7367?lnk=st&q=&rnum=2&hl=en#24063bc7209a7367
SFWA Obit and Tribute:
http://www.sfwa.org/news/2006/dfeintuch.htm
Official Site:
http://www.cris.com/~writeman/

-LV

Click here to see what we have in all of Claremont's libraries.

To see the item's location without clicking away from the results screen, click on 'extended display.'

There have been few successful attempts to combine SF and humor, and (unless the work is a parody of something else in SF, like Galaxy Quest) the humor is often a species of SF-as-social-commentary (or SF-as-parable.) Hitchhikers and its sequels fall into this category (as do some of Vonneguts and Pratchetts works.)

Ive just re-read Hitchhikers and I saw the movie over the weekend (I thought it was a very successful adaptation.) One of the books themes is causation. Adams manipulates plot just as much as Tolkien does (and he has an equally large sense of metahistory), but while Tolkien worked with mythology and religion the Hitchikers universe has no God and Adams works instead with probability and computer science (however loosely defined.)

The NPR profile noted that Adams returned to this interest towards the end of his life. When I re-read the Deep Thought chapter of Hitchikers I was struck by how much it reminded me of Lems Cyberiad, a set of short stories that features a series of logic puzzles and fables populated by robots and computers (in which humans are mythical creatures.) In that book computers are built to replicate tasks one would expect only humans could work out, in Hitchikers Well, that would be telling.

As you know, Adams died before giving the commencement speech here in 2001.

-LV

(Hmn, the other SF work my re-read reminded me of was Red Dwarf. Between the Adams Sirius Cybernetics and Red Dwarfs Talkie Toaster, I expect an exasperatingly chipper personalities out of everyday appliances any day now.)