Non-Spoiler summary:

Foster is a young boy, who only wants one thing for his birthday: a nuclear bunker. Everyone else in the neighborhood has one, you see, except for him. His friends keep telling him he’s gonna die when the Reds drop the bomb. His teachers constantly scold him for failing his nuclear readiness exercises. On the TV, the Reds keep coming up with new, deadlier weapons every week.

Well, Foster’s had enough. He’s tired of being scared. He’s gonna do whatever it takes. He’s gonna scream, he’s gonna cry, he’s gonna cuss and plead, till he gets that bunker.

My thoughts while reading it:

‘What the hell, that’s no way to talk to a kid!’ ‘You shove that bunker where the sun don’t shine, Mrs Carlyle!’ ‘The Reds made a WHAT?’ ‘Dude, buy the damn bunker, it’s for your own safety!’ ‘Yaaaay!’ ‘Aaaawww’

The technical stuff:

• Word Count: 7,000 words
• Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Go check your dad’s old stash of scifi books. The best ones are probably written by this guy.

Where you can find it:

• In his collected works anthology The Father-Thing (available in every online bookstore worth its salt)
• This story is currently not available online. Which means you’re gonna have to buy it. And trust me, this is a sound investment

By-Line:
Konstantine Paradias is a short story science fiction and fantasy writer, who has his own blog, called Shapescapes. There you can find a free novel, called Stone Cold Countenance as well as a series of sci-fi comic book reviews. For comments, requests or plain old contact, you can find him at kosparadias@gmail.com

Non-spoiler summary:

Ed Morris is a citizen of Earth, who works for an accounting firm on Ganymede. Every day, during his daily trans-solar commute, he is bombarded by animated billboards, radio and tv ads. When he has finally run this gauntlet, he reaches his home planet, only to be beset by swarms of robot salesmen, who pester him. Even at home, the barrage will not cease.

Ed Morris finally realizes he has had enough, so he pleads with his wife Molly to relocate to an extra-sola colony, where people live their lives in peace and quiet, ‘like they used to do in the 20^th century’. Molly won’t even consider it, when suddenly Ed’s worst nightmare comes to life, in the form of a Fully Automated Self-Regulating Android (Domestic use only).

What I think:

Opinions on Philip K. Dick’s tone of his work vary, but everyone can agree on one thing: the man writes like an angel; he is also terribly depressing. This story is both the best and the worst one in his anthology The Father-Thing (buy it now, it’s awesome). It’s the best because it actually addresses the contemporary problem of media saturation and the increasing aggressiveness of ad campaigns, which so far have intruded into every aspect of our lives. It’s also damn funny.

It’s the worst because of its ending. Its ending is, in fact, so depressing, that even Philip Dick apologizes for it at the end of the book.

Boring Technical Stuff:

• Word Count: 5,000
• Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. His work is legion and I suggest you start as soon as possible, or you’ll die unfulfilled.

Where you can find this story:

• In his collected works anthology The Father-Thing (available in every online bookstore worth its salt)
• This story is currently not available online. Which means you’re gonna have to buy it. And trust me, this is a sound investment

By-Line:

Konstantine Paradias is a short story science fiction and fantasy writer, who has his own blog, called Shapescapes (shapescapes). For comments or plain old contact, you can find him at kosparadias@gmail.com

Who Needs Friends Anyway?

I think that I have always imagined that aliens, when we finally meet them, will tend to be aggressive and hostile – not at all peaceful and lovey-dovey. I don’t know, that’s just my feeling. However, here is a story where humans have become very peaceful, and what’s more is that they expect aliens to be peaceful too! Well, you can probably guess how that’s going to turn out, huh?

Non-Spoiler Summary

The crew of a Kzinti war ship has just discovered a new and relatively weak species: humans. They study them slowly and try to decide if they should attack or not. Meanwhile, the crew of the Human ship is trying to make peaceful first contact, but there are just a few things that don’t seem right to the captain, so he makes a desperate decision which could either help or further endanger all those aboard.

Some Interesting Tidbits

• Word count: 5,181 (11 pages)
• You can learn more about science fiction author Larry Niven by checking out his fascinating biography.
• Special thanks to Variety SF for pointing out this great story.
• Do you like reading about the Kzinti? If so, there are plenty more stories and novels about them – and Wikipedia has a lot of information too.

Where To Find The Warriors

• This short story was first published in the February 1966 edition of If magazine.
• You can read "The Warriors" online for free at the Baen eBooks web site.
• It is also included in the famous anthology The Man-Kzin Wars.

Craving More SF Stories Like This One?

If you liked "The Warriors" then you might enjoy “Neutron Star” also by Larry Niven – about a man sent to investigate the mysterious deaths of two space explorers who were studying the galaxy’s only known neutron star.

“Monument”, a 1961 novelette by Lloyd Biggle, Jr., is about destructive tourism on an idyllic world.

Non-spoiler summary

O’Brien, a mechanic, crashes his ship on a beautiful, idyllic planet. He begins to live with the planet’s natives and soon looses interest in being rescued. As he gets old, O’Brien realizes an undeniable fact.

“It was a beautiful world. Its beaches were smooth and sandy, its waters were warm, its climate admirable. To the people of the myriads of harsh worlds whose natural riches attracted large populations, dry worlds, barren worlds, airless worlds, it would be a paradise. Those who could leave their bleak atmosphere domes, or underground caverns, or sand-blown villages for a few days in this sweet-smelling, oxygen rich atmosphere could face their lives with renewed courage.”

The world he has come to love is indeed a paradise and sooner or later, more men would come from the sky to take the land and do whatever they want with it. O’Brien, a simple uneducated man, but a man of action, finds himself reflecting on how he must protect the world he has come to love and cherish. Another fact he is aware of: he is slowly dying. After doing some serious thinking, he has the brightest young natives sent to him and begins to teach them about what they need to do when the time will come.

Time goes by until a developer finally arrives and begins building hotels, pools and golf courses. The native people put “The Plan” into effect…

The climax of the story is an unforeseen masterstroke delivered by the natives.

My thoughts on this story

• This story has a careful melange of humor, politics, economics, humanity, sense of responsibility/duty and law.
• I like the fact that the author chose to explore how a simple, uneducated man could, in his own and limited way and with a certain level of wisdom and patience, have such a profound impact on a planet’s native population.
• I really enjoyed reading and reviewing this story.

Interesting tidbits

• Word count:  16,702
• Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (April 17, 1923 – September 12, 2002) was a musician, author and internationally known oral historian.
• He served in World War II as Communications Sergeant (during which he was wounded twice).
• In the 1970′s, he founded the Science Fiction Oral History Association (SFOHA), which built archives containing hundreds of cassette tapes of science fiction notables making speeches and discussing aspects of their craft.
• “Monument” was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1962 in the Short Fiction category.
• In 1974, the novel Monument (based on the short story) was published.

Where to find the story

• This short story was first published in Analog magazine in June 1961.
• You can read it online at Webscription.

The Nature Of Man. Since the days of Pinocchio, inanimate devices seem mesmerized by Man and obsessed with trying to discover the answer to what it is and what it means to be human.

This quirky yet wonderful novelette, written by Roger Zelazny in 1966, illustrates the frustratingly perplex struggle to correlate genius with folly, strength with frailty, and all the promise and pratfalls of what it means to be Man! (*)

Story Synopsis:

Long after the Last Man had perished from existence, the Earth is faithfully maintained by armies of robotized machines and computers dedicated to the rebuilding program initiated by humans before their demise.

Solcom orbits the Earth directing the effort .To aid him in this task, Solcom builds a super computer called Frost to rule the Northern Hemisphere and one called Beta to rule the Southern Hemisphere,

As a backup system, Man had created an Alternate to Solcom : Divcom. Divcom is activated prematurely and they have a constant battle to assert their claim to be the dominant force.

With no Man in existence to make the determination, Solcom and Divcom spend eons destroying each others’ rebuilding attempts.

Frost, having time and unused resources at his disposal, becomes interested in Man after unearthing some artifacts of this now extinct creature. Frost’s curiosity grows into a frantic obsession as his research produces more questions than answers.

In a parallel to God and Satan discussing Job, Solcom and Divcom make a deal between themselves based on the outcome of Frost’s insatiable desire to discern the Nature of Man.

(*) (If it’s any consolation, my dear Frost, we humans have pondered these very questions throughout our existence as well and have come away with pitifully few results.)

The Good:

• Very well written and does not suffer in the least for having no PEOPLE in the story.
• Provides us with a long hard look from the outside in, as it were, of ourselves.
• Suspenseful.

The Bad:

• Little action here and not a very complex topic.(**)
• The ending is a little corny but still a very enjoyable story.

This & That:

• Word count 11,249
• Page Count 28
• Similar Story: If you liked "For a Breath I Tarry" you’ll love “The Bicentennial Man” by Isaac Asimov!

Can be found here:

• The Last Defender of Camelot
• Science Fiction: A Historical Anthology
• You can read it free online here.

(**) This is the toughest part of doing these reviews…finding something negative to say! I agree with Rusty in his purpose for this site – namely ONLY THE GOOD STUFF! (I’m paraphrasing of course).

With very few exceptions, the only SF I read are short story anthologies and the only way I would review one here is if I feel it is one of the Best of The Best in the FIRST PLACE!

Non-spoiler Summary in a Nutshell

Harry Morgan and Jack Latrobe have worked together as asteroid miners for a long time. It is a brutal and unforgiving job, but one which the citizens of the Belt Cities rely on to get their oxygen. The two men have become friends and learned to trust each other. So it is no surprise that when Jack goes missing on a trip to Earth that Harry wants to find out what happened to him. As Harry travels there he begins to unravel a deep corporate desire – but more importantly the big wigs on Earth begin to learn a few dark secrets about the citizens of the asteroid belt too! Mwa ha ha ha!

Interesting Tidbits:

• Word Count: 9,767 (22 pages)
• Did you know that in 1999 Randall Garrett won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Special Achievement for his Lord Darcy series? Yep. You can learn more about this fascinating author at Wikipedia.
• Special thanks to Variety SF for reviewing this excellent short story and making me want to read it!

Where You Can Find Thin Edge:

• This story was originally published in the December 1963 issue of Analog Science Fact -> Science Fiction.
• You can read (or download) a free version of “Thin Edge” at Project Gutenberg.
• It is also included in the book The Second Science Fiction Megapack: 25 Modern and Classic Tales by Masters.

If you liked “Thin Edge” then you may also be enjoy “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick – about a man who desperately wants to go to Mars but can’t afford it, so he gets vacation memories implanted instead.

Benjamin William Bova’s “The Next Logical Step” from 1962 is a short and sweet tale about the dangers of U.S. military hardware.

Have a seat, Sir

A physicist, a general, and CIA man find themselves locked away in a super secret facility one night, where the computer-simulated War Games have taken on a life of their own. The military has built its crowning technological achievement, “the most modern, most complex and delicate computer in the world” – a machine that will predict and simulate wars down to their minutest detail. What makes this war game different? Wars are not only fought in the Machine, but in the mind of the user as well.

The takeaway

This is a very fun, super quick read. Bova does a great job of getting to the heart of it, putting the reader right into the actual war simulator. You see the missiles fly, the cities incinerate, all as if you were hooked into the machine yourself. It reminds me of the scene in A Clockwork Orange when Alex is locked into his seat, eyes pried open, forced to watch the Ultra Violence.

Bova wrote this story in the heat of the cold war, when the threat of nuclear holocaust was an everyday, visceral experience. Perhaps instead of letting it bother him, Bova turned the fear into a great little sci-fi tale. It shows that what U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates in 2008 called the Pentagon’s “next-war-itis,” was alive and well in 1962, and has probably been alive since war was invented. The denouement of "The Next Logical Step," like many short short stories, is something of a zinger, but it certainly hits the reader with the point: modern war is utterly futile.

The story left me wondering what effect today’s awesomely realistic video games have on us, and… what exactly does the Pentagon have up its sleeves these days?

War Games Facts

• 5th Century B.C. – The Greeks begin playing petteia, one of the first war-themed board games.
• 6th Century A.D. – Chess is invented in Northern India, which spreads across the globe over the next 1000 years.
• 1950s – American Cold War strategists recreate full blown nuclear holocaust in elaborate games which simulate both military and geopolitical conflicts.
• 1958 – Computer-based war gaming is born with the Navy Electronic Warfare Simulator, a $7 million system that occupies three floors of a building at the Naval War College.
• 1962 – Students at M.I.T. create the game Spacewar!, the world’s first shooter-oriented video game.

Story Facts

• Publish Date: 1962
• Word count: 2,212
• Reading time: 9 Minutes
• Ben Bova (1932 – ) is an American SF author and editor. He has won six Hugo Awards for Best Professional Editor for his work at Analog Science Fiction during the 1970s. Check out his Official Website .

Where to find it

• Here’s a link to a free copy of “Next Logical Step” , which you can download for PDF or Kindle.

They’re Like Totally Spaced Out, Man!

Drugs: the tiny miracles of modern medicine and the bane of federal agents everywhere. We use them to cure illnesses, pain and boredom. Here is a story about the government sanctioning drug use on extremely long interstellar flights – and some of the side effects that come about because of that.

Non-spoiler Summary in a Nutshell

After many years of trying to create a faster-than-light space ship the government and scientists of the world finally concede that it isn’t possible, so they build a half-the-speed-of-light space ship instead! But there is another vexing problem to solve: how to keep humans from going crazy during the long flights. After several failed experiments the government finally hits on viable solution: using hallucinogenic drugs to help crew members pass the long stretches of boredom between the stars. There is one little problem though, how do they deal with those pesky hallucinations when they can no longer control them? Hmm… like good question man!

Interesting Tidbits:

• Page Count: 11
• Word Count: 3,937
• Did you know that Norman Spinrad has twice served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America? Yep. You can learn more about this science fiction author at Wikipedia.
• Special thanks to Variety SF for recommending this cool story!

Where You Can Find Subjectivity:

• This short story first appeared in the January 1964 issue of Analog Science Fact & Fiction.
• You can read "Subjectivity" for free at Project Gutenberg.
• "Subjectivity" is also included in Spinrad’s short story collection Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde.

Craving More Science Fiction Short Stories?

If you liked "Subjectivity" then you may also enjoy Insomnia by Waldo van der Waal – about a man who is cuffed to his acceleration couch at the beginning of a very long space journey.

NON SPOILER SUMMARY

Am I Still There? begins with the main character, Lee, finishing up a round of physical exams before a surgery. He banters with the doctor about all the fuss, but the story gets really interesting when you realize that all the fuss is called for because Lee is having brain surgery. Brain replacement surgery. Oh, by the way, Lee is 409 years old. And he’s very concerned about the fact that once his brain is replaced, his body will no longer have any original parts.

MY THOUGHTS

I’m sure this story will attract your undivided attention at the exact moment it attracted mine: several paragraphs in when the patient’s age is revealed. 409 years old!? Really!? How cool is that!? And reading further on, it really made sense that living that long could one day be a possibility, as the author points out that humans have been replacing their body parts for over a hundred years now, our time! Am I Still There? was an entertaining and contemplating read. I tend to shy away from older stories, but I’m really glad I chose to read this one.

INTERESTING TIDBITS

• Word Count: 2,900
• Page Count: 8
• This story was first published in Analog Science Fact & Fiction September 1963.
• I couldn’t find any information out there in cyberspace about the author, James R. Hall. Has anyone else heard of him?
• The illustration at the beginning of the story is by Leo Summers, and looks a little strange, but after reading the story, be sure to look at it again, it makes much more sense.

WHERE TO FIND AM I STILL THERE?

You can read it for free at Project Gutenberg.

Traffic Safety

I sometimes feel unsafe while driving, realizing that the only thing keeping the on-coming traffic from smashing into me is a line of yellow paint. I know, I know – that’s a depressing thought. However, after reading about the futuristic traffic in this story I’m thinking maybe our roads aren’t so bad after all!

Non-spoiler Summary in a Nutshell

Ben Martin, Clay Ferguson and Kelly Lightfoot are the team aboard Beulah – a giant, hovering, patrol car / wrecker / ambulance of NorCon. It is their job to spend weeks at a time patrolling the massive freeways spanning all of North America. They direct traffic, clean up wrecks, help stranded motorists, write tickets and even help catch criminals – all from the comfort of Patrol Car #56. It is a good thing Beulah is equipped for all these activities – what with her kitchen, surgical room, bunks and specialized arms – because they are going to need all the help they can get on this tour of duty.

Interesting Tidbits About This Story:

• Page Count: 35
• Word Count: 21,616
• “Code Three” was nominated for the 1964 Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction.

Where You Can Find Code Three:

• This story was first published in the February 1963 issue of Analog Science Fact.
• You can read “Code Three” online for free at Webscription.
• It is also included in the excellent anthology The World Turned Upside Down.

Craving More Science Fiction Short Stories?

If you enjoyed “Code Three” then you might also like “The Last Command” by Keith Laumer – about an old war machine that is reactivated decades after being buried in a radiation-proof landfill.