A Planet Called Cervantes (John Keith)

A  lone stranger called Kerrender arrives on the planet Cervantes (presumably a nod to the famous Spanish author), He is a highly trained fighter, 7ft 5ins tall and needs fuel for his ship to help repel an attack by the Rengols, an enemy force who have decimated his home planet of Rawn. After a saloon brawl leaves ten of the locals dead. Kerrender is challenged to a duel with flame-whips, while the Rengol fleet is getting ever closer.

There is a mish-mash of themes here, none of which really work (although the Spaghetti Western saloon scene is quite fun), The pretentious repetition of the line 'On Rawn died the Thirty Thousand...' is just irritating and while the ideas are decent enough for a student rag mag, they are exposed in this short story. Looking on the isfdb site, author John Keith didn't do anything else, which is a shame as there is promise in the raw talent, and the writing itself is reasonable.

Overall:- 4/10

Planet:- Cervantes

Included in:-
New Writings in SF-26 edited by Kenneth Bulmer (12 pages)

Two Rivers (R.W. Mackelworth)

A community lives by a lake inside a huge dome which supposedly protects everyone from the toxic air outside. A group of them plan to be the first for over 100 years to leave the safety of the dome and they journey on two boats, down two rivers, that flow to the outside. Some of one group are stranded and they travel across land to try and meet up with the second boat, which is travelling down the other river, but a virus has already caught up with them. The planet seems unsuitable for habitation, but there are 100,000 people who need to know for sure.

English author R.W. Mackelworth doesn't have a huge body of work and I'm not surprised as this short story is drab. The writing itself is fine but the plot is dull and goes nowhere. The 'hope for mankind' optimistic ending does nothing for a cynic like me and I'd forgotten the characters and narrative within minutes of finishing reading.

Overall:- 4/10

Included in:-
New Writings in SF-17 edited by John Carnell (24 pages)

Delilah and the Space-Rigger (Robert A. Heinlein)

A space station gets a replacement crew member who turns out to be female, much to the consternation of the station's captain. Running a tight ship is always a problem and the last thing he needs is an attractive electronics engineer ("I'd rather have a dope peddler than have a woman sniffing around my boys!"). She soon becomes accepted by the rest of the crew though and when he tries to offload her, he discovers that if she goes most of the crew go as well.

Heinlein is a genuine sci-fi heavyweight but this story (which is part of his Future History series, dealing with man's colonisation of space) reads more like an introduction to a bigger story rather than a tale in itself. As such, despite being well-written, its too slight to get too excited about in isolation to be honest.

Overall:- 5.5/10

Spaceship:- Space Station One

Included in:-
The Green Hills of Earth by Robert A. Heinlein (12 pages)

Twilight (John W. Campbell)

A man tells his friend about a strange hitch-hiker he picked up, who claimed to be from millions of years in the future, called Ares Sen Kenlin. He speaks of an abandoned city that he found, still populated by robots going about their duties, despite humans having left over 150,000 years earlier. He makes contact with a human in the distant city of San Frisco and takes a transport ship there, where he meets the current evolution of mankind which is in its twilight.

I can understand why this short story from John W. Campbell (most famous for 'Who Goes There?') is highly regarded, as it deals with high-brow stuff that intellectuals must have drooled over. The description of the cities, still run by machines, is certainly awe-inspiring but the story itself is quite cold and the writing style (probably deliberately) wooden - which makes Twilight easy to admire but not a whole lot of fun to read.

Overall:- 6.5/10

Planet:- Earth  Year:- 1932 & 3059

Included in:-
Science Fiction Hall of Fame - Vol One edited by Robert Silverberg (23 pages)

Blood Brother (James White)

Dr Conway is sent on a mission to the planet Meatball with one of its inhabitants, a large doughnut shaped lifeform called Surreshun, the first being to ever leave the planet. Most of the surface of Meatball is a thick sea and a land mass made up of living creatures, the coastline a continual battleground between predators and prey. Also, nuclear warfare is slowly killing the planet.

Conway and his team land and make contact with other creatures. In order to learn more about the environment, Conway asks to accompany a being similar to Surreshun, called Camsaug, on an underwater sea trip, but both are soon in trouble.

Blood Brother conjures up some fantastic mental images and is full of intriguing ideas, but its slightly too long and the story itself doesn't do the premise justice. Still good, but has to go down as a near miss - more on author James White here.

Overall:- 6/10

Planet:- Meatball  Spaceship:- Descartes (from the French philosopher)

Included in:-
New Writings in SF-14 edited by John Carnell (44 pages)

See Luna and Die (John Keir Cross)

Schoolboy Tom Glenn and his family are one of the first people to live on the Moon, which in the early days of colonisation is mainly inhabited by old millionaires who are able to afford the huge cost of becoming a 'Moon-dweller'. One day an unscheduled rocket arrives from Earth which has been commandeered by a bunch of criminals headed by Giovanni Frescati, known as the King of the Soho underworld, who have escaped to start a new life on the Moon. Can Tom and his gang of friends thwart the plans of the evil mob?

John Keir Cross mainly worked on scripts for the BBC, but he wrote a few children's books as well (including the very good Blackadder set during the Napoleonic Wars) and this is a snappy tale in the Enid Blyton mould (but better written) about plucky kids tackling dangerous criminals. Amusing that it is set in 1995, when it was thought that cities on the Moon would be in vogue (not precisely sure when this was written, but definitely pre-1960).

Overall:- 6/10

Planet:- The Moon  Year:- 1995

Included in:-
Stirring Stories For Boys edited by Eric Duthie (23 pages)

Death and the Sensperience Poet (Joseph Green)

Alistair McAlistair is searching the swamps of a planet similar to Earth, for a missing crew member whose communicator isn't responding. The place is inhabited by swamp-dwellers (who are human in form) and large carnivorous birdmen. Events develop when a member of another search party also disappears and McAlistair starts to have visions of his long dead wife (who committed suicide), whereupon he is drawn towards one of the large plants that grow in the swamp.

Author Joseph Green wrote quite a few short stories from the 1960's onwards and this one creates a decent atmosphere in the gloomy swamp. It becomes too much of a 'message' tale by the end though and the concluding explanation wraps everything up in too trite a way for this to rise above the mediocre (the pretentious title doesn't help either).

Overall:- 5.5/10

Planet:- Achernar

Included in:-
New Writings in SF-17 edited by John Carnell (15 pages)

Crucifixus Etiam (Walter M. Miller)

A manual worker called Manue Nanti takes a five-year contract on Mars, but he finds it difficult to adapt both physically and mentally. The project is to make Mars habitable without any support from Earth, but the labourers become suspicious of the work they are doing and the seemingly pointless nature of it. Manue struggles with his health and the reason for his existence, as mutinous feelings start to stir when the workmen realise it will take up to 800 years for the work to be completed. The title is Latin and translates as 'crucified also.'

It won't come as any surprise to find that author Walter M. Miller was religious and the story has some rather obvious themes, but it is well written and there is a real air of desolation about the lead character, especially when the narrative describes the damage that his breathing problems are causing - preachy but effective.

Overall:- 7/10

Planet:- Mars  Year:- AD 2134

Included in:-
Spectrum V edited by Kingsley Amis & Robert Conquest (21 pages)

A Martian Odyssey (Stanley G. Weinbaum)

Astronaut Dick Jarvis is exploring the surface of Mars, when his rocket crashes and he is forced to walk the hundreds of miles back to his ship, which has three other crew. He teams up with a strange bird-like creature called Tweel and they continue the long journey together.

'A Martian Odyssey' was written way back in 1934 and is considered a classic of the sci-fi genre (see its own page on Wikipedia for more details), a legacy enhanced by the fact that author Stanley G. Weinbaum died the following year, aged just 33 and so left a very small body of work. The story does come across as dated, but it reminded me of 'The Wizard of Oz' with its episodic journey and strange characters (the pyramid creatures, dream-beasts and barrel monsters). It certainly has an aura of greatness and fully deserves its lofty position in the realms of science-fiction and fantasy.

Overall:- 8/10

Planet:- Mars  Spaceship:- Ares (from the Greek God of War)

Included in:-
Science Fiction Hall of Fame - Vol One edited by Robert Silverberg (28 pages)

Student Body (F. L. Wallace)

The biologist in a group who land on a new planet, finds a mice-like animal which he needs to contain to make sure it doesn't adversely effect the humans, as they start to colonise the area. A robot cat/killing machine is used to control the mice, but this is later found in pieces after a larger breed of rat materialises and they attack the robot in numbers. Dogs are therefore brought in to see off the rats, but the evolution on the planet is much faster than expected.

Any short story with its own Wikipedia entry must be good and Student Body (not totally sure about the relevance of the title) is excellent. The narrative is easy to read, informative and exciting, and without having to spend pages and pages explaining the underlying meaning, conveys all it needs to and more. The conclusion stops you in your tracks (despite being slightly telegraphed) and this would make a first rate sci-fi film for all Alien and Predator fans.

Overall:- 8.5/10

Planet:- Glade

Included in:-
Spectrum V edited by Kingsley Amis & Robert Conquest (22 pages)

Soul Survivors (Lee Harding)

Elliot Westerman's family are all dead but he can relive moments from the past with them, thanks to a computer system called Home Memories. The memories start to malfunction though and no technical issues can be found with the system that could be causing the ghostly apparitions of his wife and children to keep materialising at random.

This is very much a ghost story with sci-fi trimmings and its certainly effective in a quiet thoughtful way. Annoyingly there are some glaring typos, with persaged (instead of presaged), smooth oily ace (instead of smooth oily face), rimed with dust (instead of rimmed with dust) and sussurrus (instead of susurrus, which is a rubbish word whatever way its spelt). It might be unfair to blame Australian author Lee Harding for these errors, but they've cost his story half a mark in my strict scoring system.

Overall:- 6/10

Included in:-
New Writings in SF-17 edited by John Carnell (24 pages)

Aspect of Environment (L. Davison)

A spaceship with three crew, intercepts a signal and traces it to a small planet. The captain and one crew member go to investigate, despite hostility from the navigator who remains aboard. On the planet a deep chasm is discovered, but after descending, the captain realises that one of their oxygen bottles has been tampered with.

Story appears to be a thriller, but shifts into more thought provoking territory and there are some positives here, but the unsatisfying ending and general naivety of style bring things back to earth with a bump and make this a filler at best.

Overall:- 5/10

Included in:-
New Writings in SF-17 edited by John Carnell (20 pages)

More Things in Heaven and Earth (H.A. Hargreaves)

A Shakespeare training scheme run by The Unit at University Television Central, which is broadcast to students across the country, is disrupted when an unidentified student manages to break into the thoughts of the lecturer and have their own ideas transmitted. The culprit is identified as Janet Ganski, who is brought to the faculty and introduced by The Unit's senior lecturer, Alan Hamilton, to the team, who want to try and understand her powers.

A long story which is intelligent and well-written, but deals with such a dull premise that it becomes increasingly tedious. I was hoping there wouldn't be a dreadful shock ending, which there wasn't fortunately, but things just pottered along to a flat conclusion which was no better. More about the author here.

The title is taken from a quote in Hamlet:- "And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Overall:- 5.5/10

Included in:-
New Writings in SF-17 edited by John Carnell (54 pages)