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

Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin Five Way Interview

Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin (born in 1999) is a distinguished composer, concert pianist, music theorist and researcher. Three of his piano CDs have been released in Germany. He started his undergraduate degree at the age of 13 in Kazakhstan, and having completed three musical doctorates in prominent Italian music institutions at the age of 20, he has mastered advanced composition techniques. In 2024 he completed a PhD in music at the University of St Andrews / Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (researching timbre-texture co-ordinate in avant- garde music), and was awarded The Silver Medal of The Worshipful Company of Musicians, London. He has held visiting affiliations at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and UCL, and has been lecturing and giving talks internationally since the age of 13. His latest book is Quantum Mechanics and Avant Garde Music . What links quantum physics and avant-garde music? The entire book is devoted to this question. To put it briefly, there are many different link...

Should we question science?

I was surprised recently by something Simon Singh put on X about Sabine Hossenfelder. I have huge admiration for Simon, but I also have a lot of respect for Sabine. She has written two excellent books and has been helpful to me with a number of physics queries - she also had a really interesting blog, and has now become particularly successful with her science videos. This is where I'm afraid she lost me as audience, as I find video a very unsatisfactory medium to take in information - but I know it has mass appeal. This meant I was concerned by Simon's tweet (or whatever we are supposed to call posts on X) saying 'The Problem With Sabine Hossenfelder: if you are a fan of SH... then this is worth watching.' He was referencing a video from 'Professor Dave Explains' - I'm not familiar with Professor Dave (aka Dave Farina, who apparently isn't a professor, which is perhaps a bit unfortunate for someone calling out fakes), but his videos are popular and he...

Everything is Predictable - Tom Chivers *****

There's a stereotype of computer users: Mac users are creative and cool, while PC users are businesslike and unimaginative. Less well-known is that the world of statistics has an equivalent division. Bayesians are the Mac users of the stats world, where frequentists are the PC people. This book sets out to show why Bayesians are not just cool, but also mostly right. Tom Chivers does an excellent job of giving us some historical background, then dives into two key aspects of the use of statistics. These are in science, where the standard approach is frequentist and Bayes only creeps into a few specific applications, such as the accuracy of medical tests, and in decision theory where Bayes is dominant. If this all sounds very dry and unexciting, it's quite the reverse. I admit, I love probability and statistics, and I am something of a closet Bayesian*), but Chivers' light and entertaining style means that what could have been the mathematical equivalent of debating angels on...

Search This Blog