Merril - The Years Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 1: [Anthology]

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The Years Greatest

Science Fiction and Fantasy 1

Ed by Judith Merril

Proofed By MadMaxAU

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

by Orson Welles

by Judith Merril

by R. R. Merliss

by Avram Davidson

by Robert Abernathy

by James E. Gunn

by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

by Theodore Sturgeon

by Mark Clifton

by Zenna Henderson

by Algis Budrys

by E. C. Tubb

by Shirley Jackson

by Willard Marsh

by Mildred Clingerman

by Jack Finney

by Isaac Asimov

by Damon Knight

by Steve Allen

by Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore

by Judith Merril

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INTRODUCTION

by

ORSON WELLES

one things sure about science-fiction: theres too much of it.

A leading editor in the field announces that the boom days are over, but the yearly amount of the stuff that still gets into print is pretty staggering.

My advice to any but the most bug-eyed addict would be to abstain from the novels. S.F. is often at its aching worst in book-length versions. Good novels (Heinleins Puppet Masters, for instance) are about as rare as ambergris and a lot harder to identify. My wife, who loathes everything remotely galactic, who alternately yawns and shudders at the prospect of journeying in either time or outer space, and herself travels almost exclusively by train, went shopping with a publishera friend of ours who claims to be an S.F. expertand presented me on Christmas with an eight-foot shelf of this seasons crop of the novels. Ploughing through the bulk of this brightly-jacketed little library only confirmed a previous opinion: one of the oddest aspects of this whole publishing phenomenon is that there still seems to be more outright claptrap between hard covers than soft, and that the short stories come off much better than the long ones.

Why? Well, I guess these tales are, after all, our modern fables and its certain that the fable as a form generally succeeds when not too extended.

If there remains such a thing as a novice reader in this literature, my suggestion would be for him to begin with the magazines until he knows a few authors, and to steer clear of the bookstores. Against this, of course, our theoretical novice might happen on a poorish issue of whatever monthly he sampled first. An anthology is probably best for a beginning, and I dont think he could do better than with this one.

For the real aficionado hell be relieved to find that he has nothing familiar from other collections to skipI reckon hell find most of his favorite authors, and these at the top of their form. The range is interestingly widefrom that convincing gadgetry dear to many of the fans, to the wildest and freest sort of nonsense. In this last area I join the enthusiasts. Its by bringing pure fantasy into currency that science-fiction makes its real and very healthy contribution to our popular literature, at least for my money.

Im going to try to persuade my wife to read this book. Theres a good hope that a first-rate sampler such as this may convert even her. If S.F.The Years Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy doesnt sell her on our twentieth-century fairy tales, shell just have to stick with the Grimm brothers.

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PREFACE

the stories in this book , says Mr. Orson Welles, are fables of our time. I think this is a good way to describe them since, like older fables, science-fantasy makes use of the imaginative background and unusual circumstance to add emotional urgency and dramatic power to what are basically problems in philosophy and morality.

Unlike Aesop, the writers of these stories seldom conclude with a clear-cut moral. In a century whose most impressive accomplishments (atom bombs, orlon, rockets, radar, cancer cures, what-have-you-?) are built upon scientific concepts with such names as relativity and the uncertainty principle, the inquiring artist does well merely to formulate a coherent question.

The questions you will find most often put in here might be compressed in one composite query:

How can we learn to live at peace with ourselves and with each other in the complexities of the world we are rebuilding with our new machines?

Fortunately, the stories are not so compressed. A good story must inevitably be unique and individual as the man or woman who wrote it. Unfortunately, if its answers that you want, you will not find them hereexcept occasionally, prefaced with what if?, I wonder, or supposing that...

The serious-minded reader will also have to forgive our authors if they resort to the frivolities of space-ships and flying bath-mats, robots and talking rats, to make their points. Even in s-f, a writer is only secondarily a philosopher; his first big job is entertainment... and that hasnt changed since Aesops time at all.

-J.M.

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THE STUTTERER

by

R. R. Merliss

Right now, today, we canand dobuild machines that can think logically better and faster than we can. Others in our growing arsenal of tools can hear better, see farther, hit harder, last longer, remember more accurately. We have not yet built anything to live livelier, feel more strongly, or dream at all. We have not learned how to make a soulyet.

The Stutterera first story, by the way, written by a Los Angeles physicianpresents the problems (and tough ones they are) of an android, an artificial man, built to be as much as possible exactly like a human beingwith just two very important differences. He is not fertile; he is indestructible.

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Out of the twenty only one managed to escape the planet. And he did it very simply, merely by walking up to the crowded ticket window at one of the rocket ports and buying passage to Earth. His Army identification papers passed the harassed inspection of the agent, and he gratefully and silently pocketed the small plastic stub that was handed him in exchange for his money.

He picked his way with infinite care through the hordes of ex-soldiers clamoring for passage back to the multitudinous planets from which they had come. Then he slowly climbed the heavy ramp into the waiting rocket.

He saw with relief that the seats were strongly constructed, built to survive the pressure of many gravities, and he chose one as far removed as possible from the other passengers.