World's Best Science Fiction 1968. edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr
World's Best Science Fiction 1968 Is Rated 88%.
AVERAGE STORY: 3.94
16 Stories : 3 Great / 9 Good / 4 Average / 0 Poor / 0 DNF
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This 1968 anthology is a collaboration between Donald Wollheim and Terry Carr. You can definitely perceive two different minds behind the selections with incredible variations in the style of the stories. This is one of the volume’s strengths for there is a buffet of different Science Fiction to suit multiple tastes. Almost all of it is pretty good.
The editors try to make the case that SF is just the extension of other forms of the fantastic from years past. They reference character studies, idea stories, and tales of damnation in the introduction. It isn’t much of a coincidence that those are a few of the themes that show up in my favorite stories from the anthology.
“Driftglass” by Samuel R. Delany. If Hemingway wrote SF, it would read like this. Cal Svenson is one of 750,000 people who have been modified to perform dangerous undersea construction work. Svenson was horribly injured when one of these jobs went wrong. He now walks the beaches looking for Driftglass. A powerful character study. Great stuff.
“The Billiard Ball” by Isaac Asimov. This is what Asimov does best. Smart scientific men. Lots of interesting discussion. An interesting mystery. Believable science. And throw on top the internal politicking of scientific academia. A great little story.
“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison. Ellison has created a vision of scientific Hell. Five people _ the last on the planet - are tortured, transformed, and humiliated by a Computer Intelligence that is built for War and knows only how to hate.
World's Best Science Fiction 1968 Is Rated 88%.
16 Stories : 3 Great / 9 Good / 4 Average / 0 Poor / 0 Dnf
“See Me Not” by Richard Wilson
Good. A fun bit of fluff where a family man wakes up on morning and is invisible. Wackiness ensues.
“Driftglass” by Samuel R. Delany
Great. A masterpiece of character and mood. An older man genetically modified to work on underwater construction projects meets a younger group that are going to reattempt the job that horribly scarred him.
“Ambassador to Verdammt” by Colin Kapp
Good. Military men and the bureaucracy come into conflict as a planet prepares to receive an ambassador to a completely alien mentality.
“The Man Who Never Was” by R. A. Lafferty
Average. A man makes people disappear in what might be an allegory for authors.
“The Billiard Ball” by Isaac Asimov
Great. Did one scientist kill his rival through the creative application of a billiard ball and science?
“Hawksbill Station” by Robert Silverberg
Good. Atmospheric novella about political prisoners stranded in the bleak prehistoric past.
“The Number You Have Reached” by Thomas M. Disch
Good. A man lives alone haunted by guilt in a automated house. He was in space when nuclear war came and he may now be the last man on earth. Then the phone rings.
“The Man Who Loved the Faioli” by Roger Zelazny
Average. Not sure I really understood this story. You have a man who is and isn’t alive and a Faioli who loves men for one month before she dies. They meet in a graveyard and have a relationship.
“Population Implosion” by Andrew J. Offutt
Good. The average age of a human is falling as people are unexpectedly dying - from the oldest to the youngest. In exactly that order.
“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison
Great. The horrific and famous story of the five final humans, tortured and remade by a War Computer that hates them.
“The Sword Swallower” by Ron Goulart
Good. A super-spy, member of the Chameleon Corps, hunts down those ‘evil pacifists’ through a series of comic, satirical, madcap adventures.
“Coranda” by Keith Roberts
Good. To win the favor of the vicious Ice Mother, ships with runner charge forth into a barren and ice covered world to bring back the narwhal’s horn. Violent adventure with only the barest hint of SF.
“Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne” by R. A. Lafferty
Good. They want to use time travel to make a very small change to history. But if you don’t know that a change has been made, what is to stop you from changing it again. And again.
“Handicap” by Larry Niven
Good. A businessman is introduced to a sentient being without hands to manipulate the world around them. Luckily that is exactly what this executive was counting on.
“Full Sun” by Brian W. Aldiss
Average. Machines hunting werwolves with humanity caught in the middle.
“It's Smart to Have an English Address” by D. G. Compton
Average.. Two friends discuss what place - if any - new life extension technology should play in their lives, arts, and legacies.
