SCIENCE FICTION

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31239, 10 December 1966, Page 4

SCIENCE FICTION

A Heinlein Triad. By Robert A. Heinlein. Gollancz. 426 pp. Robert Heinlein is one of the most distinguished and controversial of modern science fiction writers, and he deserves his reputation as one of the masters in his field. As the blurb claims, this book is "a Heinlein feast,” containing a full-length novel “The Puppet Masters,” and two shorter novels, “Waldo,” and “Magic, Inc.” The inclusion of “The Puppet Masters” can only be applauded, as this novel has been hard to obtain for a number of years. It is an “invasion of Earth” yarn in the best of traditional patterns, but as always, with Mr Heinlein, it is exciting and not too implausible. The Puppet Masters are parasitic “slugs,” who invade Earth and establish complete control over their hosts. Much of the excitement of the stopr derives from its being told in the first person, a point of view which Mr Heinlein handles with remarkable ease. Waldo is a memorably arrogant and irascible scientific genius who, through a muscle deficiency, is forced to live in the weightlessness of an orbiting space station. He hires out his services at exorbitant rates, until the time when he makes a momentous discovery concerning the structure of the universe. “Magic, Inc,” is the ribald story of a world very much like ours, but one where magic works, and its practice is regarded as a serious profession. It is a lighthearted yarn in the best Heinlein tradition.

The Best from “Fantasy and Science Fiction”: 14th Series. Edited by Avram Davidson. Gollancz. 251 PPThe publication of the annual collection of best stories from the “Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,” has become something of an event. The 17 stories in the latest volume are of a uniformly high standard: quite an achievement for a collection of this kind. It is of Interest that all but one of the stories are set on Earth, the notable exception being Roger Zelazny’s brilliant “A Rose For Ecclesiastes,” with its lyrical evocation of a dying race of Martians—a somewhat worn and standardised theme, but one that is treated here with freshness and originality. “Dark Conception,” by Louis J. A. Adams, the story of the birth of a Negro Messiah in the Deep South, is beautifully written, its terrifying implications being barely hinted at Equally terrifying, but in a far more specific way, is S. S. Johnson’s “The House By The Crab Apple Tree," which deserves to rank among the best of the post-nuclear-war short stories. A more light-hearted, but still vaguely disturbing, story is Wilma Shore’s “A Bulletin From The Trustees,” a droll account of the frustrations of trying to learn something of the future from an “average” twenty-first-century man brought back to the present Also notable is the wry humour of Eric St Clair’s quaint little fantasy, “Olsen and the Gull.”

This is the third and last collection from “Fantasy and Science Fiction” to be edited by the inimitable Mr Davidson, who has now relinquished his editorship of that magazine. It is to be hoped it will not be his last anthology. The Corridors of Time. By Poul Anderson. Gollancz. 209 pp. "The Corridors of Time” is an exciting novel—all of Poul Anderson’s are. It deserves particular attention, however, for its remarkable theme, in which a quasi-mystical theory erf history is developed. Despite an occasional obscurity in presentation, the analysis of the growth of civilisation in terms of a struggle between the opposing forces of the people of the earth and those of the machine, or between individuals and organisation, is intellectually exciting as far as it goes. But it leaves much unsaid and much unanalysed —a possible store of ideas for future Anderson novels. Conflict between the two factions, the Rangers and the Wardens, rages across the centuries from the Stone Age to the far future, with troops being despatched to the era where (or “when”) they are needed. Parallels can be drawn between this novel and Leiber’s “The Big Time,” but whereas the time of the “Change War” is seen as flexible, Mr Anderson’s picture is of a more rigid continuum in which events are relatively fixed. “The Corridors of Time” is original and exciting science fiction which will be enjoyed by thoughtful readers.