“A Science Fiction Omnibus” edited by Brian W. Aldiss

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Rating: 4/5 Stars

A good collection of stories, some of which are old favourites, while others haven’t been read before but turn out to be interesting stories of speculation. Those I have read before and still like include those by Isaac Asimov, Greg Bear and Ted Chiang, while others encountered in the collection that are fascinating are those by James H. Schmitz, Katherine MacLean, Bruce Sterling, Harry Harrison, Eliza Blair, Robert Sheckley and John Crowley.

• “Sole Solution” by Eric Frank Russell: a short short story about a person becoming aware in a dark place. The person starts a process to ‘escape’ from the dark place, in a rather obvious way.
• “Lot” by Ward Moore: as civilization breaks down due to the start of a conflict, a man moves his family to the countryside to begin a new life. But the journey is full of family conflict that leads the man to make a decision about his family members at the end.
• “Skirmish” by Clifford D. Simak: a disquieting story about a newspaper reporter who goes to his office early one day to discover all is not right with the machines he sees. He eventually deduces he was chosen for a reason and humanity’s fate may lie in the choices he may make.
• “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” by James Tiptree, Jr.: a reporter attempts to interview a human who had travelled to the stars, only to learn that to the aliens, humans are primitive.
• “Poor Little Warrior!” by Brian W. Aldiss: a monologue on the poor life of a time travelling timid man from the future who goes back in time to shoot a dinosaur, only to be disappointed by the act.
• “Grandpa” by James H. Schmitz: on an alien world, a trip on an organic raft world turn dangerous, unless one person can figure out how the raft really works based on his observation of other organisms on the alien planet.
• “Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov: on a world surrounded by six suns and forever in sunlight, sunsets has left only one sun in the sky. But now the light from the remaining sun is being blocked and for the first time in thousands of years, man must face the darkness and the horrors it may hold.
• “The Snowball Effect” by Katherine MacLean: an entertaining story about a sociology department head being asked to justify its existence to the Dean. When it does, through a social experiment on exponential growth, the results are inevitably world changing.
• “Swarm” by Bruce Sterling: a human researcher enters the home of an alien swarm with a social structure similar to social inserts like ants. The purpose of the research is to enslave the swarm to do the bidding of humans. But the swarm has other ideas.
• “Blood Music” by Greg Bear: a researcher developing miniature sensors that can enter the body goes too far and develops biological computers. Then, he injects them into himself, and starts a process that would lead to a higher intelligence on Earth.
• “Answer” by Fredric Brown: a short short about linking all the computers in the known universe to ask a question that should not be asked.
• “The Liberation of Earth” by William Tenn: a tale passed down from generation to generation about the time the Earth came to the attention of alien beings who fought battle after battle on it to liberate it from each other, and the end results of the multiple liberations.
• “An Alien Agony” by Harry Harrison: a priest arrives at a world where aliens want literal proof of the truth, and pays the price. And so do the aliens.
• “Track 12” by J. G. Ballard: two men, who are also rivals, spend some time listening to recordings of sounds produced by microscopic objects, vastly amplified. But the last recording would be specially produced by one of the man for the other.
• “Sexual Dimorphism” by Kim Stanley Robinson: on another world, the relationship between two people turn sour, leading to a genetic difference between man and women bring interpreted in an unusual fashion.
• “The Tunnel Under the World” by Frederik Pohl: a man wakes up and goes about his day: again and again. When he wakes up to that fact one day, it leads him and a companion he meets to dig for the truth which would turn out to be stranger than they imagine, but hinted at throughout the story.
• “Friends in Need” by Eliza Blair: a young girl is excited as she is going to choose her pet. But in this future where pets are sentient, the choice of which pet to decide on may have more repercussions.
• “The Store of the Worlds” by Robert Sheckley: a man goes to a shack whose occupant says he can send a person to another world for some time. Is it for real, or is it a hoax? The man has to think about it as he goes on with his life.
• “Jokester” by Isaac Asimov: a man who likes to tell jokes wonders about where jokes come from. The answer given by a large computer named Multivac may not please him or mankind.
• “The Short-Short Story of Mankind” by John Steinbeck: a parody take is the rise of civilization from the cave man days.
• “Night Watch” by James Inglis: the story of an autonomous spaceship on a voyage through the universe on a mission of discovery and, ultimately, survival.
• “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang: a language specialist is working on understanding the language of aliens visiting the earth, while at the same time telling the story of the life of her daughter. It is only towards the end of the story that a change in how to perceive events and actions caused by understanding the aliens’ language makes the connection between the two parts of the story explicit.
• “Protected Species” by H. B. Fyfe: an inspector on a newly colonized planet visits some ruins believed to have being built by ancestors of the natives on the planet. But the truth will turn out to be the opposite is what was expected.
• “The Rescuer” by Arthur Porges: two scientist blow up important equipment to stop it being used in a possibly world changing experiment, as they admit in the subsequent trial.
• “I Made You” by Walter M. Miller, Jr.: a military robot on the moon is tasked to keep watch over an important area and destroy intruders. But it is still satisfied to do is job even when failures render it unable to tell friend from foe.
• “The Country of the Kind” by Damon Knight: if you live in a world where everybody is kind, a man of violence might be considered its king. Or maybe not
• “The Cage” by A. Bertram Chandler: when human survivors from a spaceship that crashed on an uncharted planet get picked up and put in a cage by aliens, it would take skill and some luck to conduct to convince their captors that they are intelligent beings too.
• “Fulfilment” by A. E. van Vogt: in the future, a solitary machine contemplates its fate when it is contacted by another machine from the past. In following the other machine back in time, it makes plans to conquer the past while discovering its own future, which it has forgotten about.
• “Common Time” by James Blish: a traveller on a faster than light ship suddenly discovers himself unable to move. It is only by thinking about the situation that he discovers the truth which involves the flow of time; and maybe the flow of love?
• “Alien Embassy” by Garry Kilworth: a woman goes for a holiday on an island given to visiting aliens. But it all seems to go wrong then she develops a relationship and an appetite for the alien she meets there: or does it?
• “Great Work of Time” by John Crowley: a long tale about a man who works out how to travel through time only for his invention to be taken over by a society that intends to keep the British Empire alive and the world at relative peace: but only if one event at the start of it all were to take place.

Book read from 2021/05/18 to 2021/06/01