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Worlds of When
Contents:
Transfusion / O. Chad
Bullet with his name / F. Leiber
Death and the Senator / A.C. Clarke
Farmer / M. Reynolds
Rations of Tantalus / M. St. Clair.
159 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published May 1, 1962
22 people want to read
About the author
Groff Conklin
118 books26 followersEdward Groff Conklin (September 6, 1904, Glen Ridge, New Jersey - July 19, 1968, Pawling, New York) was a leading science fiction anthologist. Conklin edited 41 anthologies of science fiction, wrote books on home improvement and was a freelance writer on scientific subjects. From 1950 to 1955, he was the book critic for Galaxy Science Fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 16, 2022
A collection of fair-to-middling science fiction stories that really show their age, coming from the 1950s, as they do.
They range from ridiculously profound to tediously mundane to kind of pointless, in all honestly. And, they all remain hopelessly optimistic as to how far technology will have progressed by the year 2000 (although one has the Sahara being reforested in the 1990s - whilst everyone is still using data card computers).
If you're looking for good, older science fiction, you can probably give this one a pass. Now that I think about it, a couple of these stories were bordering technophobic. And one is solidly anti-utopian because only misery makes life worth living - or some other silly notion like that.
They range from ridiculously profound to tediously mundane to kind of pointless, in all honestly. And, they all remain hopelessly optimistic as to how far technology will have progressed by the year 2000 (although one has the Sahara being reforested in the 1990s - whilst everyone is still using data card computers).
If you're looking for good, older science fiction, you can probably give this one a pass. Now that I think about it, a couple of these stories were bordering technophobic. And one is solidly anti-utopian because only misery makes life worth living - or some other silly notion like that.
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April 30, 2022Five novelettes examining some possible futures. These classic sci fi efforts, first published in 1959-61, show the prescience that good sci fi practioners often seem to have.
“The Rations of Tantalus” examines a society where the people are medicated into happiness, to the point of not knowing how to feel emotion at all.
“Farmer” tells of an effort to resist the gradual desertification of the planet, and the political and economic forces that resist these efforts.
“Death and the Senator” tells of the gap in access to health care between the rich and the poor, and how short-term politics defeats long-term necessities.
The other two are more along the lines of the traditional “Aliens are out there, and they are watching us!” genre – Amusing fantasies, but not really successful projections of the future – at least, not so far
“The Rations of Tantalus” examines a society where the people are medicated into happiness, to the point of not knowing how to feel emotion at all.
“Farmer” tells of an effort to resist the gradual desertification of the planet, and the political and economic forces that resist these efforts.
“Death and the Senator” tells of the gap in access to health care between the rich and the poor, and how short-term politics defeats long-term necessities.
The other two are more along the lines of the traditional “Aliens are out there, and they are watching us!” genre – Amusing fantasies, but not really successful projections of the future – at least, not so far
August 4, 2019
An extra star just for Margaret St. Clair's "Rations of Tantalus." It's inexplicable that this still relevant and harrowing story apparently hasn't been reprinted or anthologized in English for over 50 years.
April 23, 2022
I was in a Chicago bookstore a few weeks ago and found The Fantastic Swordsmen in their discount box. This was also in their discount box; it wasn’t on my list but it has a fantastic cover as well as Clarke and Leiber on the cover. The “theme” is about as inclusive as you can get for science fiction: “Five short novels of improbable todays and possible tomorrows”.
Four out of five of these are amazing or close to it, and the collection leads with its best, and an author I don’t think I’ve read before: Chad Oliver and his 1959 “Transfusion”. The United States has time travel; it can only be used for observation. Among the many purposes that it’s put it to is allowing archaeologists to use it. They discover that there are no humans or evidence of humans before about 25,000 years ago. All the bones, all the tools, all the footprints and cave art, doesn’t exist when they go back to look.
As in A Fall of Moondust, Clarke is amazing at making science fiction into a thriller.
Fritz Leiber’s “A Bullet With His Name” uses Leiber’s humor to confront humanity with alien overseers (who bear a strong resemblance to a working-class god and devil) that don’t understand human life but are still tasked with testing humanity for reason.
Arthur C. Clarke’s 1961 “Death and the Senator” takes on a Proxmire-like politician well before Proxmire’s Golden Fleece awards. It appears at first to be a semi-typical wish-fulfillment revenge story, but keep reading to the end!
And finally, Margaret St. Clair’s “Rations of Tantalus” may be the best story of hers I’ve yet to read. It’s especially interesting to me because it uses something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, the belief by UFO enthusiasts that the government is hiding evidence of alien visitations to save us from ourselves; my own believe is that the more dangerously likely scenario would be hyping a threat that doesn’t exist. It isn’t absolutely clear that St. Clair’s “invaders” threat is made up to draw attention away from other problems, but it’s very likely.
Her story also predicts an America where everyone is so afraid of offending that they take pills to kill any sort of anger or hurtful feelings; they strive for the perfect in everything, with the result that there’s nothing desirable.
And that people deliberately avoid thinking about anything that might cause upset.
The suicide she’s talking about is a vast reduction in the birth rate. People just don’t want to have sex in this dystopian utopia.
These stories were all published between 1954 and 1961—mostly from 1958 to 1961; St. Clair’s story is the 1954 outlier. So there are linguistic and cultural oddities throughout; at one point I was momentarily confused when someone promised to call someone else, while on the telephone. They meant physical visit, “call” having that meaning before telephones took it over (it remains in the phrasing “call on”). Leiber has his character discard razor blades through a slot in his bathroom. That’s not a futuristic device, such slots are still found in houses from the era, and there’s often a pile of dirty razor blades in the wall beyond the slot.
There are also the very optimistic extrapolations of technological progress. Arthur C. Clarke’s 1961 story takes place a year or so before 1976, and we’ve already got space stations and travel to them. Chad Oliver’s 1959 time travel story takes place in 1982.
Leiber’s story and St. Clair’s story could take place anytime, as long as you’re willing to wave away the cultural differences.
All four are fun reads, as long as you don’t take Groff Conklin’s introductions too seriously when reading them.
Four out of five of these are amazing or close to it, and the collection leads with its best, and an author I don’t think I’ve read before: Chad Oliver and his 1959 “Transfusion”. The United States has time travel; it can only be used for observation. Among the many purposes that it’s put it to is allowing archaeologists to use it. They discover that there are no humans or evidence of humans before about 25,000 years ago. All the bones, all the tools, all the footprints and cave art, doesn’t exist when they go back to look.
As in A Fall of Moondust, Clarke is amazing at making science fiction into a thriller.
Fritz Leiber’s “A Bullet With His Name” uses Leiber’s humor to confront humanity with alien overseers (who bear a strong resemblance to a working-class god and devil) that don’t understand human life but are still tasked with testing humanity for reason.
Arthur C. Clarke’s 1961 “Death and the Senator” takes on a Proxmire-like politician well before Proxmire’s Golden Fleece awards. It appears at first to be a semi-typical wish-fulfillment revenge story, but keep reading to the end!
And finally, Margaret St. Clair’s “Rations of Tantalus” may be the best story of hers I’ve yet to read. It’s especially interesting to me because it uses something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, the belief by UFO enthusiasts that the government is hiding evidence of alien visitations to save us from ourselves; my own believe is that the more dangerously likely scenario would be hyping a threat that doesn’t exist. It isn’t absolutely clear that St. Clair’s “invaders” threat is made up to draw attention away from other problems, but it’s very likely.
Her story also predicts an America where everyone is so afraid of offending that they take pills to kill any sort of anger or hurtful feelings; they strive for the perfect in everything, with the result that there’s nothing desirable.
And that people deliberately avoid thinking about anything that might cause upset.
Was he being deliberately poisoned? No, not quite that. It would have meant that the big pharms knew that the euphoria pills were dangerous, and manufactured them anyway. But a whole society was deliberately closing its eyes to evidences of poisoning. A society that was so eager to forget the sordid physical bases of its existence that it struck out blindly at nothing—the invaders—like a man in Rage. And in the end it acquiesced, like a man taking euphoria pills, in its own suicide.
The suicide she’s talking about is a vast reduction in the birth rate. People just don’t want to have sex in this dystopian utopia.
These stories were all published between 1954 and 1961—mostly from 1958 to 1961; St. Clair’s story is the 1954 outlier. So there are linguistic and cultural oddities throughout; at one point I was momentarily confused when someone promised to call someone else, while on the telephone. They meant physical visit, “call” having that meaning before telephones took it over (it remains in the phrasing “call on”). Leiber has his character discard razor blades through a slot in his bathroom. That’s not a futuristic device, such slots are still found in houses from the era, and there’s often a pile of dirty razor blades in the wall beyond the slot.
There are also the very optimistic extrapolations of technological progress. Arthur C. Clarke’s 1961 story takes place a year or so before 1976, and we’ve already got space stations and travel to them. Chad Oliver’s 1959 time travel story takes place in 1982.
Leiber’s story and St. Clair’s story could take place anytime, as long as you’re willing to wave away the cultural differences.
All four are fun reads, as long as you don’t take Groff Conklin’s introductions too seriously when reading them.
December 19, 2011
Good stories, albeit maybe just a tad too obvious.
January 16, 2024
Semi-entertaining, with only one short story (Farmer) being outstanding.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews