20s and 30s Talkies to Pen (20th Century Science) Book

Isaac Asimov's 1969 anthology bundles together three types of story: substantial works of the early 1950s that had for whatever reason escaped his earlier anthologies; a few small, often whimsical works, often written on commission, from the late 1950s and the 1960s, after he had re-oriented his main career toward popular science writing and wrote fiction only occasionally; and "Nightfall", his 1941 masterpiece, that he had previously kept out of anthologies, probably out of resentment. [He didn't like constantly told that the best thing he'd ever written was something he wrote when he was 21...]

This unusual mixture is a recipe for unusual Asimov - most of these stories are in some way uncharacteristic of his usual style or themes. It is not, however, necessarily a recipe for his best writing.

There are twenty stories here (although the first five provide half the pagecount). They are (blurbs my own...):


Nightfall (1941 – Astounding)
If the stars should emerge one night in a thousand years…


Green Patches (1950 – Galaxy)
The second expedition to Saybrook’s Planet hopes to avoid the fate of the first. To that end, its human crew is entirely male, and its holds are filled with female animals, monitored night and day. But why are humans so warped, so damaged, to want to avoid the best of all possible fates?


Hostess (1951 – Galaxy)
As an academic biochemist, Rose Smollett is a career woman in a man’s world. And she has some questions to consider. Why, for example, is a hay-eating alien medical researcher visiting Earth all alone? Why does he want to stay at her house? Why does he want to visit the Missing Persons Bureau? Why is her husband being so boorish about it all? And why DID he marry her, anyway?


Breeds There A Man… ? (1951 – Astounding)
Elwood Ralson, noted atomic engineer, does not want to kill himself. But he may not have a choice – because there are some truths in the universe that man was never meant to know…


C-Chute (1951 – Galaxy)
Five men remain on a captured starship, waiting for imprisonment on the alien homeworld. Each has their own desperate reason to escape and to return home to Earth – but can any reason be powerful enough when only an act of heroism can save the day?


‘In a Good Cause – ’ (1951, New Tales of Space and Time)
In a good cause, there are no failures; imprisonment, even execution, are only forms of delayed success. Human planets are engulfed in continual internecine conflict, while the hay-eating Diaboli construct a vast, homogenous, empire; one man stands up to unify mankind.


What If – (1952 – Fantastic)
A man and his wife meet a very peculiar stranger on a train, and consider an unusual question: what if their own meeting on public transport years before had not gone as it did? Would their lives be different?


Sally (1953 – Fantastic)
When an intelligent car is past its prime, some owners don’t want to send it to the scrapheap. Instead, they send it to live on a farm upstate. There, a custodian looks after them, repairs them, upgrades them, admires them. Most beautiful of them all is Sally…


Flies (1953 – F&SF)
Three men meet again at a college reunion: a priest in search of meaning, a jaded expert on animal communication, and a bitter insecticide researcher plagued perpetually by flies. Perhaps there are some things man was never meant to know…


‘Nobody Here But – ’ (1953 – Star Science Fiction Stories)
Bill Billings is a handsome, intelligent electrical engineer with a problem: he just can’t pluck up the courage to propose to the feisty Mary Ann! Also, less importantly, he’s just called his friend Cliff at their computer lab and had a conversation with him… even though Cliff was on the way to Bill’s house at the time… *DUN DUN DUUUUNNNNN*


It’s Such a Beautiful Day (1954 – Star Science Fiction Stories)
One morning, Mrs Hanshaw’s teleporter develops a fault. This has a terrible psychological impact on her son.


Strikebreaker (1957 – The Original Science Fiction Stories)
On the asteroid-world of Elsevere, the society is happy. But to what extent can the happiness, indeed the very safety, of society be permitted to rely on the unhappiness of even one man?


Insert Knob A in Hole B (1957 – F&SF)
If only there were some way around the limitations of flat-pack, self-assembled space infrastucture. Some way that could be narrated in 350 words or fewer…


The Up-to-Date Sorceror (1958 – F&SF)
What if Gilbert and Sullivan’s first full-length operetta had a slightly different ending? A professor invents a love potion.


Unto the Fourth Generation (1959 – F&SF)
Somebody keeps seeing variations on the same surname one day. Jewish things happen.


What is this Thing Called Love? (1961 – Amazing)
Hapless aliens abduct two humans and attempt to observe their mating rituals – their knowledge of which derives entirely from 1930s erotic science fiction stories about aliens abducting humans and observing their mating rituals


The Machine That Won the War (1961 – F&SF)
The great computing machine, Multivac, has finally won the war against the evil Denebians. Which is surprising, because, as the Chief Programer and Chief Interpreter of the machine discuss with the Executive Director of the Solar Federation, the process has a number of small flaws…


My Son, the Physicist (1962 – Scientific American)
I’m not going to dignify this one with a tease…


Eyes Do More Than See (1965 – F&SF)
A model of a head; parts are labelled


Segregationist (1967 – Abbottempo)
A surgeon has some reservations about the operation they are to perform



And how good are these stories? Well, they vary. "Nightfall", nearly 80 years after its first publication, remains more or less timeless and a gem of the genre - if not perhaps necessarily the greatest SF story of all time, as it used to be considered. "My Son, the Physicist", on the other hand, is just awful. My pick of the non-Nightfall stories would be the unsettling "Sally". Most of the longer stories are solid, second-tier stories, while the shorter ones tend to be disposable - although are couple are entertainingly so.

Overall? The good and the bad sort of cancel out. Let's call it... "Not Bad". Asimov's talent as a storyteller shines through - indeed, due to the oddity of many of the stories, the breadth of his talent is more visible here than in most of his anthologies, I think. However, he was also an author with limitations - limitations he can transcend in his best stories, but that drag down the rest. For better or worse, Asimov wrote in an era of volume - the economics of the pulps, and his own obsessive nature, lead him to put every idea on the page, even those that didn't really merit it. This anthology gives us the whole range, from a masterpiece like "Nightfall", through a range of flawed but still powerful stories, into a realm of disposable but adequate page-fillers, all the way down to a couple of clunking failures. There are half a dozen or more stories that should interest the genre fan here... but other than "Nightfall", nothing to make this particular anthology a must-read.

But if you want a more detailed impression of the stories, you can find one on my blog.