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Index
Something New Under the Sun
by Robin Scott Wilson
Associate Director of the Committee
on Institutional Cooperation
Preface
The Prize of Wonder
EDGAR ALLAN POE, 1809-1849, is the author of the oldest story in this volume—and yet, peculiarly, it could also be said to be the most modern. The story was originally written as a hoax, intended only to build circulation in the highly competitive world of newspaper publishing, but the elements of scientific extrapolation are so logically presented that it would seem impossible for anyone not an aeronautical engineer to refute them. Poe’s scientific invention is all the more believable for the prosaic way in which it is presented. It’s undeniably a loss to the field of science fiction that he did not turn more toward science in his inventions.
The Balloon-Hoax
“The balloon
“the journal
EDWIN A. ABBOTT, 1838-1926, was a Shakespearean scholar whose hobbies were mathematics and the construction of mathematical puzzles. Flatland was written ninety years ago. As fiction, it scarcely rates as a classic; but as concept, it remains as fascinating today as it was then. Because of length limitations, only two excerpts of the story can be presented here. Interested readers will be able to find the original volume in the quality paperback section of most large bookstores.
Flatland
Two Excerpts
Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland
Concerning the Women
AMBROSE BIERCE, 1842-1914, was one of the original rugged individualists who helped create the nineteenth-century legend of the independent American. He wrote only to please himself, never to satisfy a critic or an audience— a strange attribute in a man who made his living for half a century as a writer. Bierce wrote a total of ninety-three short stories between 1870 and 1896; forty-four of these are classified as horror tales. Moxon’s Master is a look both backward into myth and forward into a future that few people were capable of visualizing in those times. He was one of the first to ask the question: can a machine think? He disappeared into Mexico during the revolution of 1914 and presumably died there, although neither the exact date nor the place of his passing is known.
Moxon’s Master
H. G. WELLS, 1866-1946, wrote the majority of his scientific romances very early in his career. The Time Machinefirst appeared in 1895; by the end of the century, he had already produced The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, and When the Sleeper Wakes. His attention was already turning toward the more serious theme of social criticism; after 1908, other novels in the science fiction realm appeared only occasionally. He was first and foremost a writer, and no matter what the theme, works came from his pen at a fairly hectic rate. The Land Ironclads first appeared in 1903 and is most notable for the speed with which its science fiction was to be superseded by the science fact of technology advanced by war.
The Land Ironclads
1
2
3
4
5
RUDYARD KIPLING, 1865-1936, was born in Bombay, India, and grew up at the time when the British Empire was in full flower. The idea of the “white man’s burden” was keenly felt a century ago, and Kipling, in his writings and his poetry, personified the drive to empire more thoroughly than did any writer before or since. He frequently delved into fantasy when writing for children, as in both Jungle Books and Just-So Stories; his ventures into the area of scientific romance were far rarer. With the Night Mail first appeared in 1905, a time when the future of air travel seemed to belong with the lighter-than-air dirigibles; Kipling chose those for his vessels of the future—though the relationship between the mechanics of his Postal Packet 162 and those of the Zeppelin dirigibles of his time seem as farfetched an extrapolation as the most esoteric space drives of a later generation of science fiction. In this story Kipling shows a keen appreciation of the future technology. The interested reader may want to read such stories as Easy as A.B.C., The Finest Story in the World, The Mark of the Beast, and Wireless.
With the Night Mail
E. M. FORSTER, 1879-1970, was considered the dean of contemporary English novelists until his recent death, even though his last novel (in time of writing), A Passage to India, was published in 1924. The Machine Stops was written early in the century and is more a study in sociological extrapolation than a technological one—and in that, it is a forecast of the trend that science fiction would follow half a century later. The scientific basis is there, but Forster seems to shrug it off; he is not concerned with the effect of the future on the total race, but with the effect on a microcosm, that section that has retreated into the utopian security of the machine. He hints that others have broken those bonds, but his characters never manage to join them; in the end they must die with their society
The Machine Stops
Part I: The Air-Ship
Part II: The Mending Apparatus
Part III: The Homeless
JACK LONDON, 1876-1916, politically a Socialist and personally a rugged individualist, lived many of the adventures that became famous in such novels as The Call of the Wild and The Sea Wolf—and took his own life at the age of forty. He turned early to science fiction, using the genre to express his contempt for the social structure of the world as he knew it. But despite the underlying political theory that gave such works as Before Adam, The Iron Heel, The Scarlet Plague, and The Star Rover (the editor’s favorite) their impetus, his feel for adventure and his zest for living were so strong that the reader could ignore the polemics and proselytizing and let himself enjoy the story completely. The Unparalleled Invasion was written near the end of his career in 1914. It forecast what may well be the most prophetic vision of World War 111 ever (though without a knowledge of atomic power). For China is the enemy of 1976, and the Western powers are the world leaders who band together to fight a horrifying final biological war . . .
The Unparalleled Invasion
A. CONAN DOYLE, 1859-1930, created perhaps the best-known character of modern English literature in Sherlock Holmes and gave the detective story the first broad popularity that continues to make it one of the primary categories of entertainment fiction. Holmes was created to shore up the income from a not-too-successful medical career and was so successful that the doctor was able to give up practice entirely. The creator hated his creation, of course, for the creation grew to be the stronger personality. Doyle even killed Holmes off in The Final Problem. But public outcry forced him to resurrect his insufferable detective. Later in life he created the preposterous character of Professor Challenger, a pompous, bombastic figure—and one of the more memorable science fiction characters of all time.
The Disintegration Machine
STEPHEN VINCENT BENET, 1898-1943, born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was that rarity, a poet recognized in his own time. He published his first book of poetry in 1915, while still a teenager and before entering Yale. Benet chose as source material for the great body of his work his own American heritage; his epic poem of the Civil War, John Brown’s Body, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1929. He is known for a number of outstanding short stories, includingBy the Waters of Babylon, a postholocaust view of a world that seems an indictment of the atomic age—although it was published in 1937! Benet wrote a number of other fantasies that stand as classics today, particularly Johnny Pye and the Fool Killer and The Devil and Daniel Webster. The latter has been translated to the stage as a play at least twice, including the recent Archibald MacLeish treatment as Scratch, and once as a musical; it was also produced as a movie (All That Money Can Buy) and has been done on television. During the 1930s Benet’s views of the future often took on a nightmarish tinge, as in the two poems that follow.
Metropolitan Nightmare
Nightmare Number Three
THEODORE STURGEON, b. 1918, is one of only two “modern” writers of science fiction to be represented in this collection. His first stories began appearing in minor markets during the middle 1930s, but it was not until John Campbell had taken over as editor of Astounding that he broke into the field of science fiction. From the beginning he was recognized as one of the shapers of the new image the genre was developing in the pages of the Campbell magazine. After a number of solid short stories, early 1941 saw the appearance of Microcosmic God—a study of man the creator. This one story established him as a major writer. With the coming of the war, he joined the Seabees and nearly two years passed before he produced another story. There were those who thought the wait worthwhile, for the story was the following . . .
Killdozer!
JAMES BLISH, b. 1921, like Theodore Sturgeon is a product of the modern age of science fiction. He began writing about the same time as Sturgeon, although his earlier stories appeared in minor markets. It was not until the end of the 1940s that he became as well known. Despite Sturgeon’s headstart, in 1950 Blish began to produce stories of astonishing concept—including the Okie series, about the distant time when Earth’s cities would desert her, taking off into space as self-contained spaceships. He also wrote a serious study of religious questions in A Case of Conscience and its unrelated sequels, Dr. Mirabilis (a fictional study of the life of Roger Bacon) and the most recent, Black Easter and The Day after Judgment The following story is a product of the earlier Blish, first published twenty years ago. Is is part of a series that forecast the time when men would remake men, not in their own image, but in ways that would enable the race to conquer the stars. Surface Tension is the story of a water-filled wooden spaceship—two inches long . . .
Surface Tension
Prologue
Cycle One
1
2
3
Cycle Two
1
2
3
4
5
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