Dangerous Visions 2 Edited by Harlan Ellison

Dangerous Visions 2
Edited by Harlan Ellison
Copyright 1969

New Introduction
After the successful publication of the Dangerous Visions anthology in hardback in 1967, the anthology was broken up into three paperback volumes. In volume 2 of this cycle, Ellison writes a new introduction to describe the impact the anthology has had on the publishing industry and the effect it has had on writing science fiction. He also takes a moment to excerpt a couple letters written to him and to discuss the censorship efforts directed at the anthology.

The Man who Went to the Moon – Twice by Howard Rodman
A little boy caught in a hot air balloon returns to terra firma claiming he has traveled to the moon. He is an instant celebrity and visited by many dignitaries. Decades later, as an old man, he repeats the accomplishment. This time, he is dismissed as an old quack and people care very little for his accomplishment.

Rodman would have us reflect on technological marvels and accomplishments and how they cease to be marvels and become parts of ordinary life with the passage of time. Rodman’s writing has a Twain tone to it in the beginning, then takes on a much more morose tone of perhaps Bierce at the end. A worthwhile entry in Ellison’s groundbreaking anthology.

Faith of Our Fathers by Philip K. Dick
Many years after the Vietnam war, the communists have won and taken over the United States and other parts of the world. A low level party official is provided an opportunity for advancement within the party. But one evening, he takes some snuff provided by a street vendor and has his eyes opened to the nature of his government and its leader.

Philip K. Dick was well known for his use of psychedelics. Here, he explores the oft-reported religious experience many LSD users experience and how it might be useful in discerning the nature of God, the government, and religion. The end of this story left a little to be desired. But, like many Dick stories, leaves you pondering its meaning while providing a worthwhile narrative.

The Jigsaw Man by Larry Niven
A condemned prisoner escapes death row in a society that harvests organs from those executed. He strikes back at society by destroying an organ donation center. When he is captured and tried, the prosecution doesn’t even bother introducing those charges. They have other charges that are easier to convict him on.

Maybe it rang ominous in 1966. Today it’s just shrill and alarmist. One of the few tales in this anthology completely destroyed by the passage of time.

Gonna Roll the Bones by Fritz Leiber
A man enters a casino in Hades to gamble with a demon. They dice for the man’s soul.

I so wanted to like this story because Leiber is a legend and I’ve not read him before. But this story, which Leiber admitted was an oft-told tale, was overwritten with long, run-on sentences and needless alliteration. It would appear many disagree with me since this story won both the Hugo and Nebula Award for best novella.

Lord Randy, My Son by Joe L. Hensley
A middle-aged lawyer deals with day to day life with his mentally challenged (autistic?) son. His son, Randy has the ability to mete out justice to the wicked and conjure kindness from the misunderstood. But all his father can see is the disability.

Autism is not quite the mystery today it was in the 1960s. It may have been quite revolutionary (dangerous) to assign special powers or savant skills to the mentally challenged. Today, it’s an old trope. Nonetheless, Hensley writes an effectively moody story that hits all the right emotional chords to achieve his goal.

Eutopia by Poul Anderson
In an alternative world, a cultural researcher flees a land after seducing the child of its ruler. He is pursued into a neighboring land and the leader of that land agrees to give him refuge and transport him home. When he arrives in his homeland of Eutopia, he complains to his boss of the crude and barbaric behavior of other lands. But it is revealed that our hero has engaged in some of the most verboten behavior himself.

I didn’t see the twist coming and I didn’t see that Anderson provided many clues. His lyrical prose made this story sometimes difficult to read, but he paced it well and with the last sentence demonstrated why this story was indeed a dangerous vision.

Incident in Moderan by David R. Bunch
A war is fought for the sake of war. A cease fire is declared to allow an enemy to repair his weaponry and defenses so that hate of the enemy can continue to feed the war. But the enemy mistakes it as an earnest cease fire to allow them to honor their dead.

The subtext of the futility of war and the need for a propaganda machine to feed hatred of the enemy is not subtle. The story is well paced and just the right length to make it enjoyable without repeatedly ramming the subtext home.

The Escaping by David R. Bunch
A being performs a daily stunt for those who watch him perform. One day, while folding air, he thumbs his nose at his audience and escapes in his space egg.

I just hate when sci-fi becomes literary garbage. That is what this is. David Bunch got two stories in this most famous anthology and the second one a stream of words marching across the page in search of an idea or a plot.

The Doll-House by James Cross
A man and his family are living well beyond their means and robbing Peter to pay Paul, waiting for the inevitable crash. The man appeals to his wife’s uncle who he believes is wealthy. Instead of giving him money, the uncle provides a doll house inhabited by a tiny prognosticator. He uses it to build wealth until it once again comes crashing down around him.

This is a retelling of that timeless classic about the goose who laid the golden eggs. Cross gives the tale just enough twists to make it worth reading. One of the best in the book so far.

Sex and/or Mr. Morrison by Carol Ermshwiller
A petite creature secludes herself in the boarding house room of her obese neighbor and watches him undress, fascinated by human nakedness.

Not as lurid as it sounds, nor as interesting – and not because it is not lurid.

Shall the Dust Praise Thee by Damon Knight
The Christian God comes to Earth to judge mankind and finds that they have annihilated themselves in war. Man’s final plea is etched upon a stone in Britain: “Where were you?”

Difficult prose sometimes concealed what was an interesting story about God written by an atheist.

Thieves’ World Edited by Robert Asprin

Thieves’ World
Edited by Robert Asprin
Copyright 1978

Fantasy and science fiction writer Robert Asprin created the fantasy setting of Sanctuary – a remote town known as a haven for thieves, brigands and riff raff, a number of characters, and invited the heavy hitters of the genre to write stories for what would become a twelve volume anthology.

Introduction by Robert Asprin
Asprin introduces us to Sanctuary. The emperor has a troublesome, idealistic half-brother who is making his life difficult. His chief adviser says have him killed. The emperor sends his half brother, Prince Kadakithis to Sanctuary to serve as its new governor.

Kadakithis is going to clean up Sanctuary, but he’s going to do it his way. There will be no brutality by the town guard. He will target petty crime first, then move up to the smugglers, assassins, and thieves as he learns the lay of the land. The stage is set for the first story.

Sentences of Death by John Brunner
Jarveena is an orphan whose parents were murdered when marauders sacked her village. She, just nine years old was raped and disfigured. She longs for revenge on the perpetrators and can’t believe her eyes when one of those wicked men from many years ago shows up in her town of Sanctuary as part of the Prince’s guard detachment.

Meanwhile, a member of the town guard has brought to her boss, Melilot who is a scribe who deciphers, decodes, and translates documents, a scroll that was dropped by that very man. Melilot immediately recognizes the runes as magical and develops a scheme to have Jarveena help him swindle some coin from the man who dropped it.

Before the swindle can take place, however, the wizard Enas Yorl intervenes and helps Jarveena develop a better plot – one that will help her realize her revenge fantasies. The scroll is actually a spell that will bring about the death of two people. Through swift contrivance, Jarveena is able to bring death to the man who wronged her so many years before. But, Enas Yarl reminds her that there are two deaths in the scroll and that second death very well could be hers. He convinces Jarveena to sign on with a merchant marine and get out of Sanctuary and let death take someone else.

Brunner masterfully weaves a number of intricate subplots and twists into his short story. It’s clear that Thieves World is going to be an interesting and entertaining collection of stories that combine swords, sorcery, and intrigue. The first three residents of Sanctuary have been introduced and we’ll see where they go from here. Bravo to the late John Brunner for getting this series of books off to a fascinating start!

The Face of Chaos by Lynn Abbey
It’s going to be a bad day Illyra – the half blood S’danzo and fortune teller realizes when the Face of Chaos card shows up in her own reading. A bad day indeed. . .

It starts when her husband’s anvil breaks. Dubro serves as the blacksmith in the bazaar at Sanctuary. In this remote part of the empire, a replacement will be impossible to find. Dubro takes off to drink his sorrows away. Illyra returns to her work of telling fortunes.

A woman of wealth and means, but trying to disguise it, comes to her for a reading. She needs to know what’s in store for her tomorrow. Illyra predicts ill for the woman who finally spills her story. Her father’s land was seized by the priests of one of Rankan’s many deities and they plan to build a new temple on it. Marilla was to be the priest’s prize. When she spurned him, he declared that she would be the sacrificial virgin placed under the cornerstone of the new shrine.

Marilla pleads for help. If Illyra can save her, she can have the anvil resting in her father’s abandoned barn. Illyra gives Marilla a drug that will knock her out. She figures the priests may have no use for her if she is asleep and if they go ahead and sacrifice her by burying her alive, at least she’ll be unconscious.

That night, Illyra is visited by the mage, Lythande who tells her Marilla must be saved. It is imperative for the kingdom. Illyra tells Lythande about the knockout drug, but Lythande says that is not enough. A substitute must be found.

She wanders into the night to find her husband and happens upon a brutal murder. The victim’s demolished face morphs into the Face of Chaos. Emotionally stricken, she collapses and is discovered by Dubro. Illyra tells her of the mage’s visit, the anvil, and they hatch a plan.

The acquire a corpse from the gallows. Confident that it will be too dark to distinguish between a sleeping virgin and a dead old man, they interrupt the late night processional of priests to the temple building site. They switch out the corpses. When Illyra looks upon Marilla, she sees first her face, then the faces of people she’s known before it morphs into a featureless head. Illyra flees in panic to the barn to hide.

There, she encounters an agent of Lythande who explains the ruse. The Priests of Ilsig knew that under their own temple was a body – not of royal lineage as everyone believed – but a lowly slave substituted by the Queen. The Priests of Ils therefore conspired to rig the site of a temple to Ranke with a false body. While their temple was consecrated by an imperfect body, it was a body. A temple consecrated by an inanimate dummy would give Ilsig a leg up on Rankan. Lythande and all mages want to keep the balance of power in the cosmos.

Illyra and Dunro have their anvil. They return to the bazaar where she will resume her occupation as a seer S’danzo and he a blacksmith.

This was an engaging story, but without a little groundwork laid for the background of the deities and temples, the conspiracy was difficult to understand.

The Gate of Flying Knives by Poul Anderson
A young bard’s love is taken from the Prince’s palace by a strange creature called a “flying knife” that apparently comes from a different plane. Cappen Varen and his friend, Jamie, must locate the gate within the temple of Ils, pass through, and rescue the beautiful Danlis and the princess to whom she is a lady in waiting.

I know Poul Anderson is a legend in science fiction and fantasy, but I thought the dialogue in this story was just atrocious. But the story was good enough to overcome the poorly written dialogue. The story also serves as our introduction to the Vulgar Unicorn and its innkeeper.

Shadowspawn by Andrew Offutt
A palace coup is afoot within the walls of Prince Kadakathis’ castle. A royal concubine and a member of the royal guard recruit a thief and conspire with him to have an important staff stolen from the prince’s quarters. The thief, Hanse – or Shadowspawn – is regarded as an up and comer in The Maze of Sanctuary. He knows when he’s being set up, but develops his own plan to take advantage of the situation. But the tables get turned on all parties by the unlikeliest of people and Hanse finds himself with an unprecedented opportunity.

There’s nothing terribly original about the story. It’s the standard treachery of a palace coup fare and finding a dupe to take the fall. But Offutt writes well and it is enjoyable if predictable. The end is a bit of a cliffhanger and we’ll have to wait until later to find out what decision Hanse eventually makes.

The Price of Doing Business by Robert Lynn Asprin
Jubal, once a gladiator and slave, is now a merchant and dealer in slaves and contraband. He is one of the wealthiest merchants in Sanctuary with many paid eyes and ears in The Maze and the Bazaar. As he is receiving his daily intelligence briefing in his mansion, a Maze street urchin is brought before him, claiming he has a message. One of Jubal’s hired spies – Hakiem – is in hiding and in fear for his life. The urchin says that Jubal must come to Hakiem’s aid at once. Jubal agrees and accompanies the lad into the city, musing over the little urchin’s spunk and courage. The boy leads him into a narrow alley where he is set upon by a group of kids bent on vengeance for the random murder of one of their own by Jubal’s men. Jubal tries to fight them off, but there are too many. Just as he’s about to fall, he’s rescued by a Hell Hound – one of the prince’s guard. The Hell Hound is righteous in his attitude about morality and service to the kingdom and is quick to pass judgment on Jubal’s life as a peddler of evil.

The first half of this story was packed with action and moved quickly. Once Jubal was rescued, it read like a political debate with an anti-climatic resolution. Seeing as Asprin was the editor of this series of books, it looks as if he may be developing a character to be passed onto another writer, because this story, standing alone, is not a good short story.

Blood Brothers by Joe Haldeman
Lastel is an assassin in Sanctuary. To some, he’s Lastel, wealthy merchant and trader of the drug krrf (the author’s description would have it resemble cocaine in its effect). To others, he’s the gruff, but good natured bartender, One Thumb at the Vulgar Unicorn. Lastel has just assassinated by way of poison, the son of a noble and acquired a large supply of krrf. He plans to sell it to the owner of a brothel. When they sit down to strike the deal at the Vulgar Unicorn, the brothel owner says she’s been robbed of a brick of krrf. When they go to ascertain if it is the same block of krrf, they find it gone. It seems a wizard is meddling in their business. They pay a visit to the wizard’s father to ask him to intervene.

Joe Haldeman’s climax is a scenario frequently seem in role playing games which is having a character fight himself. In this case, One Thumb must fight Lastel. The blow by blow account of this encounter is confusing and the ending entirely too ambiguous for it to be a good story.

Myrtis by Christine DeWees
The owner of a brothel is informed that she and the other operators of brothels will have to pay a hefty tax to continue with business in Sanctuary. Myrtis immediately recognizes that the tax is designed – not to raise revenue – but to put them out of business. She organizes the other madams and hits Sanctuary’s “respectable” merchants in their pocketbook. She also seduces on the palace guard, “Hellhounds” and shows him what lies beneath her brothel and how important it is to the safety of Sanctuary.

Of all of the writers in the first volume of Thieves World, DeWees is the least heralded. Yet her story was the most concise and tightest of the bunch. It is a story that could be set in our world today with its sin taxes designed to change behavior. Myrtis is going to be an interesting character.

The Secret of the Blue Star by Marion Zimmer Bradley
The magician Lythande saves a poor wretched prostitute from the hands of an evil mage of his order. Each of those mages wears a blue star tattooed on his forehead. But the saving was part of the evil mage’s plan. He hopes that the prostitute will seduce Lythande and force him to tell the secret of the Blue Star which will eliminate him as a rival by destroying his power. But Lythande has a secret bond with the madame Myrtis and she helps get him out of his bind.

Bradley is one of the giants of science fiction writing and this tale is a good example of why she is held in such regard. Great emotion in this story along with well developed characters.

The first Thieves’ World book has some great stories and a few average stories. None of them are bad.

The concept of Thieves’ World is to have each author create their own character and have that character interact with characters created by other writers. What the reader gets is different perceptions of characters based on who is perceiving them (meaning which writer is telling the tale). It is an original concept and was well received by the science fiction/fantasy community. This book is one of the most widely read and best known anthology series in fantasy literature for good reason.

A Treasury of Great Science Fiction Volume II

Boucher, Anthony
A Treasury of Great Science Fiction
Volume II
Copyright 1959
Doubleday

Contains the following stories:

Brain Wave
by Poul Anderson

The Earth passes through a mysterious energy field that dramatically increases the entire human race’s IQ. Shortly thereafter, labor is hard to find when a super-intelligent race finds themselves unable to do menial chores. There is great social and psychological upheaval across the globe. A group of scientists work together to quickly solve the problems while dealing with their own issues and those of their family members.

This is intelligent Golden Age science fiction. The events and characters are entirely believable and the story is well paced and engaging. The only drawback is the shortness of the novella prohibited more development of the story’s characters and their interpersonal relationships. Anderson gives us just barely enough to make the characters interesting.

Bullard Reflection
by Malcolm Jameson

A star ship’s crew’s athletic ability saves them when they are double-crossed on one of the moon’s of Jupiter.

Dull, uninteresting story by an author of whom I’ve never heard.

The Lost Years
by Oscar Lewis

What would have happened had Abraham Lincoln been saved by a surgeon instead of dying the morning after being shot? Lewis explores the possibilities in this alternative history short story.

Not really sci-fi, but engaging nonetheless.

Dead Center
by Judith Merril

A woman designed it and a man is piloting it to the moon. The newest rocket, the KIM III malfunctions as it lands on the moon. Its lone astronaut must be rescued. His wife, who designed the rocket, works frantically to put together the team that will save her husband before he runs out of food and oxygen. Meanwhile, their young son is left to wonder about all the frantic activity about him.

This was a tightly told story . A lot of action and character development crammed into 20 pages of text. Merril makes it work. Merril was envisioning woman engineers leading design teams back in 1953.

Lost Art
by George O. Smith

Two brothers discover a device in the Martian desert and use trial and error learning how to make it work . In a parallel story, a Martian father and son assemble and deploy the device.

Perhaps the most useless story I’ve ever read. I kept thinking “something bad is going to happen when these guys figure out what this thing does.” Nothing bad ever happened. Nothing ever happened. What a pointless waste of twenty pages.

The Other Side of the Sky
by Arthur C. Clarke

The narrator is an engineer aboard a space station that he is confident will be a stepping stone into deep space. Set in the 1990s, the narrator relates anecdotes from his space adventures that show how prescient Clarke was in judging the success of satellite-based communications. It was written in 1957. The space stations he describes would be the same ones that Stanley Kubrick would bring to celluloid in the Clarke story 2001: A Space Oddysey.


The Man Who Sold the Moon
by Robert Heinlein

Man, how I hated this story. I could not finish it. I’ve read two Heinlein stories and hated them both. I’ve always thought about reading Stranger in a Strange Land but now I will not.

This is a story about a corporate pig-dog who wants to acquire the moon and take title to it so he can subdivide it and sell the parcels. In a real story, he would have taken it by force through war or something exciting like that. Instead, in Heinlein’s painfully boring story, he takes it through the drawing up of contracts and the structuring of corporations --- all described in painstaking detail in Heinlein’s narrative and the dialogue.

Imagine reading a low-level corporate attorney’s journal entries. It’s not that exciting.

Heinlein may be the most overrated writer in the history!

Magic City
by Nelson S. Bond

Set more than 1500 years in the future, after the fall of civilization, women lead society. Most societies shun men and need them for little more than breeding stock. Advanced civilizations are slowly integrating men into their society as equals.

In this setting a couple journeys from their home in Jinnia to Newyalk to slay the demon Death, who constantly claims their weak, infirm, and old. Swords and daggers are their weapons of choice as they enter the dangerous city and the temple of Slukes.

The names of the various cities and territories are very clever phonetics and plays on words. They live in a country called Tizzathee (as in my country ‘tis of thee). I usually hate such cute word play, but Bond’s are clever enough to be engaging. The battle scenes are well written and his descriptions of the post-apocalyptic east coast are riveting. This was a great story.


The Morning of the Day They Did It
by E.B. White

A television executive now located on a remote planet relates the story of Earth’s final day and how its destruction came about from the placement of the ultimate weapon in space.

I read this on the heels of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and, as in Bradbury’s classic, this story describes how television destroyed society. This story is not nearly as brilliant as Bradbury’s. The narrator uses mundane (very mundane) events from his day along with dialogue from mundane newscasts and shows to set the stage for the Earth’s discussion. This was a creative idea not well executed.

Piggy Bank
by Henry Kuttner

A greedy man has figured out how to manufacture synthetic diamonds, but keeps losing his fortune to burglars. He asks his chief scientist to develop the ultimate safe that can flee when someone attempts to rob it. But when it flees when the man wants to access his fortune contained therein, he tries every conceivable method to get access.

Letters from Laura
by Mildred Clingerman

A woman’s time travel is documented in a series of letters – first to her mother, then to the company that helped her time travel on vacation.

Dull, dull, dull!

The Stars My Destination
by Alfred Bester

A roughneck spaceman pursues vengeance against the crew of a ship that left him in space to die, marooned on a wrecked ship. Meanwhile, the government and various businessmen want to exploit his knowledge of his doomed ship to retrieve its priceless cargo for use in an interstellar war.

I am somewhat familiar with Bester, who ended his career writing radio sci-fi for the CBS Radio Mystery Theater in the 1970s. Stephen King references this work as Bester’s best in his tome On Writing. It is obvious that King used one of Bester’s ideas for one of his better short stories, The Jaunt because jaunting plays a key role in Bester’s novella. For Bester, jaunting is but part of the story. In King’s story, the science of jaunting is explored.

I think this story must have been serialized because every two or three chapters seems to be a story unto itself.

A Treasury of Great Science Fiction Volume I

A Treasury of Great Science Fiction
Volume 1
edited by Anthony Boucher
Copyright 1959
Doubleday

Contains the following stories:

Rebirth
by John Wyndham
This is a powerful novella about post-apocalyptic Newfoundland and a young boy’s coming of age in a profoundly religious society

David, the son of THE local minister in a society where any physical deviation from the normal makeup of the human body, encounters a little girl with six toes. They try in vain to hide the secret, but are unsuccessful and the girl and her family are forced to flee. David, meanwhile, shares a small mental abnormality -- telepathic ability -- with several other local youths who all work hard to conceal it. When David’s new sister is born, they soon find their own abilities pale in comparison to hers. They fear their secret will get out.

This book is dripping with social commentary on religion versus intellectual progress and the role of religion in our society. The characters lack the alienation of a Kafka hero, but it is not hard to sympathize with them as their culture tells them they are abominations before God. While the bit about collectivism at the end smacks a little of socialistic superiority, the story blends just the right amount of social analysis with action to make a truly engaging story.

The Shape of Things That Came
by Richard Deming
A scientist’s nephew finds his time traveling T-shirt and uses it to travel from the year 1900 to 1950. Upon his return, he writes a short story about the experience that his editor simply finds implausible. The man explains what he saw.

Pillar of Fire
by Ray Bradbury
This was the antithesis of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. In this story, the vampire struggles against the humans who dominate society. The last existing corpse comes to life in the 25th century to fight for its existence and to exterminate humans. In a perfectly ordered society, nobody suspects any abnormalities despite the chaos around them

Bradbury gives hints at what would come in Fahrenheit 451, which he wrote later. Our vampire compares himself favorably to the anti-heroes of the works of Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft in a society that has burned such disorderly books.

Waldo
by Robert Heinlein
The world’s greatest scientist is presented with an engineering problem that could threaten civilization. He is forced to appeal to a much older and arcane form of problem solving to develop the solution.

This was science fiction for engineers. WAY too much technology and not nearly enough story. I struggled to finish it.

The Father Thing
by Phillip K. Dick
Aliens have eaten Charles Watsons’ father. He must flee from the awful thing that has taken its place and take revenge on its evil master.

This story contains that theme of impostors and conspirators that was so common in the Golden Age Science Fiction of the 1950s. This is comparable to Invasion of the Body Snatchers which was also published in 1954.

The Children’s Hour
by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore
A man goes to a psychologist to be hypnotized so he can recall what happened to missing hours and days in his life. He recalls a young, beautiful girl to whom he was engaged. But fate -- or the intervention of some higher power -- always seems to get in the way.

This was a somewhat intriguing story that built the tension nicely, then veers off in a really odd direction that can't really be called a twist. Melds contemporary psycho-drama with mythology, and in the end, plain old fashioned sci-fi.

Gomez
by C.M. Kornbluth
A prominent scientist receives a letter from an immigrant dishwasher asking him to verify his theory regarding nuclear physics. When the government finds out about it, the young immigrant dishwasher finds his life dramatically altered.

An ok, if non-descript story

The Widget, the Wadget, and Boff
by Theodore Sturgeon
Aliens conduct sociological and scientific experiments on a group of boarding house residents to ascertain whether or not the human race has the necessary mental capacity and ability to survive. As they engage their science from a higher plane of existence, they behave like a typical human married couple.

I don’t normally like character studies like this, but Sturgeon’s characters were meaningful and engaging. The story’s sci-fi tie-in is really tertiary to how human beings of various backgrounds dwell in the same habitat and how they see each other and themselves within that habitat.

Sandra
by George P. Elliot
A first person narrative about a man who purchases a female slave who is obedient and dutiful (and willing to sleep with him). He falls in love with her and she becomes lazy, disobedient, and independent. So he puts her back into slavery and she reverts to her normal form.

I guess this story qualifies as some alternative reality story since the guy purchased his slave at an Oakland department store, but nothing else in the text indicates any hint of sci-fi or alternative reality. It was racy for its time, I’m sure, but today would be dismissed as highly misogynistic.

Beyond Space and Time
by Joel Townsley Rogers
A brilliant scientist teams with a brilliant engineer to design and build the first rocket-ship designed to leave the galaxy. When the engineer is launched, he learns more about what is going on on Earth and his personal life from billions of miles away than he ever did while on Earth.

Ok, if somewhat light, story.


The Martian Crown Jewels
by Poul Anderson

A locked room whodunit in space. The Martian Crown Jewels are being transferred from Earth --- where they were being studied --- to the Mars moon Phobe where they will be unloaded and returned to Mars. They are stowed in a locked cabinet aboard an unmanned freighter. When that freighter arrives, the jewels are gone. Terrified diplomats turned to a skilled Martian detective to help them solve the unsolvable case.

The Weapon Shops of Isher
by A.E. Van Vogt

A group of dissidents operate transient weapons shops that move from town to town and village to village to sell specialized self-defense weapons to help repress the tyranny of an imperial government. A young man defies his father who finds the weapon shops offensive and strikes out on his own with the help of a young woman associated with the weapon shops.

This story was superb and embodied everything that is good about Golden Age science fiction. The characters are strong and the story plot driven. The pro-2nd amendment advocacy is not even thinly veiled, but allows the reader to identify with characters confronting the same issues 5000 years in the future that we confront today.

A website I found describes Van Vogt as the third pillar of Golden Age sci-fi along with Bradbury and Asimov. It also claims that this novella was actually a series of short stories published separately.