Tales of Science Fiction (SF) - Brian Ball (Ed.) *****

This short story collection from the 1960s, mostly featuring 1940s and 1950s stories, looks unpromising. It was published by Penguin's defunct young adult imprint Peacock, and with its clunky title and unimpressive cover it looks like a waste of space on the bookshelf. But it contains what are simply some of the best science fiction short stories ever written - for any age of reader.

Although inevitably one or two feel a touch old-fashioned, on the whole they've aged incredibly well and have very little to suggest just what classics they are. Stories include Arthur C. Clarke's Hide and Seek, in which a spy in Mars orbit in a spacesuit attempts to evade a battle cruiser, Robert Heinlein's Life-Line, exploring the impact on society of a device that uses the concept of the block universe to predict an individual's precise time of death, Paul Ernst's invisible attacker in Nothing Happens on the Moon, John Christopher's poignant Mr Kowtshook about an alien attempting to evade capture by hiding in a circus on Earth, John Wyndham's Meteor, where a difference in viewpoint between an alien ship and humans has disastrous consequences and Brian Aldiss's But Who Can Replace Man? portraying a future where artificial intelligence is commonplace and struggling to know what to do when humans go extinct.

There are several other stories, including my absolute favourite in the collection, which is Eric Frank Russell's, Allamagoosa, a humorous tale of how an attempt to overcome a bureaucratic confusion in the space navy has unexpected consequences.

I first read these stories when I was about 15 and some of them (notably Allamagoosa) have stuck with me ever since. It's a pleasure to revisit them.

As you might imagine, this book is long out of print, but secondhand copies are available.

Paperback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Govert Schilling - Five Way Interview

Govert Schilling is an acclaimed and prize-winning freelance astronomy writer and broadcaster in the Netherlands. His articles appear in Dutch newspapers and magazines, but he also has written for New Scientist, Science and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, and he is a contributing editor of Sky & Telescope. He wrote dozens of books (including a couple of children’s books) on a wide variety of astronomical topics, many of which have been translated into English, German, Italian, and Chinese, among other languages. In 2007, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named asteroid 10986 Govert after him, and in 2014, he received the David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.His latest book is Target Earth . Why science? We live in troubling times. Fake news and conspiracy theories abound, and trust in science is diminishing. Many adults don't seem to realize that almost everythi...

The Infinite Book – John D. Barrow ****

Authors are often asked to review books on a topic they’ve written on themselves. The reasoning is sensible – they ought to know something about the subject – but there’s always that uneasy suspicion that there’s going to be a bit of bias creeping in. So I think it’s only fair to admit up front that I have written a book on infinity (of which more later). Infinity is a wonderful subject, because it’s intimately mind-bending (if the combination sounds paradoxical, that’s what infinity is all about) and gives you the chance to pull in all sorts of different concepts and assocations along the way, something Barrow does with great gusto. There’s a surprisingly large amount of coverage here for God, and for the universe, and the book jumps around from Aristotle to Hilbert’s Infinite Hotel (explained at great length), from the paradoxes of infinite sets to the paradoxes of time travel. Overall it’s an enjoyable journey that gives plenty of opportunity to be amazed and surprised. The...

Battle of the Big Bang - Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Harper *****

It's popular science Jim, but not as we know it. There have been plenty of popular science books about the big bang and the origins of the universe (including my own Before the Big Bang ) but this is unique. In part this is because it's bang up to date (so to speak), but more so because rather than present the theories in an approachable fashion, the book dives into the (sometimes extremely heated) disputed debates between theoreticians. It's still popular science as there's no maths, but it gives a real insight into the alternative viewpoints and depth of feeling. We begin with a rapid dash through the history of cosmological ideas, passing rapidly through the steady state/big bang debate (though not covering Hoyle's modified steady state that dealt with the 'early universe' issues), then slow down as we get into the various possibilities that would emerge once inflation arrived on the scene (including, of course, the theories that do away with inflation). ...

Search This Blog