Annual Best SF

Donald A. Wollheim (editor): The 1972 Annual World's Best SF.

I used to have a bunch of these, but lost them at one point or another. Before the various massive "best of" annuals that we have now from folks like Dozois, Wollheim and a few others put out relatively slim volumes. I'm now in the process of buying these again whenever I spot them (I'm trying for all hardcovers!) and have a good chunk of the run. Each volume starts with an introduction by Wollheim going over the year in SF. It's a brief article compared to the massive briefings given in some of today's annuals! It's very interesting to take a look at the table of contents. About half the time you end up saying "who?" when you come across a name, for the rest it is either a name that has been forgotten or overlooked or somebody who (lucky for us) is still going strong!

Larry Niven: The Fourth Profession. A story that ties in to both his Leshy Circuit series and his Draco's Tavern series. An alien race is visiting Earth. One of the crew spends several nights at a bar, sampling Terran drinks. In exchange, he gives the bartender several "knowledge pills". Unfortunately, the bartender does not quite remember what he learned from each of the pills!

Joanna Russ: Gleepsite. It's interesting to see what ages worse. Technology in science fiction or "messages" in science fiction. This is "message" SF. Nothing to see here, move along...

Stephen Tall (Compton Newby Crook): The Bear with the Knot on His Tail. A fairly long entry in the book, part of a series that was eventually re-issued as a collection (The Stardust Voyages) and even eventually produced a sequel (The Ramsgate Paradox). Think of it as a Starship Enterprise crewed by slightly odd people. The story revolves around a large exploration ship that investigates a signal coming from a star in the constellation known to us as the Big Dipper, or Ursa Major, hence the "bear" that had a "knot on his tail" of the title. The story feels like the author was trying to be like Poul Anderson, but, alas, fails. I will eventually dig out the collection and re-read it; I have to admit to having only the faintest of memories of the book.

Michael G. Coney: The Sharks of Pentreath. I found this story interesting in that I don't recall it ever being mentioned in any of the essays I've read on the origins of cyberpunk, transhumanism, and the like. However, I have to wonder if it influenced anybody like William Gibson or Vernor Vinge, let alone the following "generations" of people like Ken MacLeod or Charles Stross. In order to lessen the load on the Earth, most of the population is put into a form of stasis, and only allowed to exist as breathing, moving entities for part of their lives. The rest of the time they are in that stasis and can only interact as small, mobile robots. Small robots, for example, can be crammed several hundred to a transport that used to carry a dozen or so humans. Small robots can visit a pub, visit a beach, visit a resort, without actually consuming much in the way of resources. A grimly sarcastic little tale.

Poul Anderson: A Little Knowledge: A minor entry in Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization series. It does, however, encapsulate one of his recurring themes (know-it-all Earthmen are tripped up by their assumptions). Some amusing bits in the depiction of the alien and the increasingly frustrated Terran pirates.

Christopher Priest: Real-Time World: It was interesting to read this, given that Priest is again in the spotlight (with The Prestige coming to the screen). Wolleim gives the tale one spin in his opening comments, I saw an entirely different interpretation. This was a kind of psychological version of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. One member of the crew of a space station (which feels like a precursor to the station depicted in the novel version of Solaris, as opposed to how it was depicted in either film version), is observing the other crew members by manipulating the flow of information and seeing how it comes back to him. However, he forgot the principle behind the discovery of Heisenberg: the observer impacts the observation.

R.A. Lafferty: All Pieces of a River Shore: If I hadn't seen Lafferty's name on this, and if the character's had mentioned the Missouri rather than the Mississippi, I would have sworn this tale had been written by Clifford D. Simak. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but the style of dialogue, the character names and background, etc., all are very strongly reminiscent of Simak's work. Good tale about a strange painting that isn't, slightly damaged by a overdrawn "surprise" ending.

Made up of: Introduction (Donald A. Wollheim); The Fourth Profession (Larry Niven); Gleepsite (Joanna Russ); The Bear with the Knot on His Tail (Stephen Tall); The Sharks of Pentreath (Michael G. Coney); A Little Knowledge (Poul Anderson); Real-Time World (Christopher Priest); All Pieces of a River Shore (R.A. Lafferty); With Friends Like These (Alan Dean Foster); Aunt Jennie's Tonic (Leonard Tushnet); Timestorm (Eddy C. Bertin); Transit of Earth (Arthur C. Clarke); Gehenna (Barry Malzberg); One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty (Harlan Ellison); Occam's Scapel (Theodore Sturgeon).

Counts as eight entries in the 2006 Short Story Project.