Book Report: Spectrum II edited by Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest (1962, 1964)

Book coverThis book is a fifty-year-old collection of science fiction short stories from some of the luminaries of the business.

It includes:

  • “Beyond Bedlam” by Wyman Guin. In a world where individual humans are split into two distinct personalities through medication and the personalities take turns with the body, one man stops taking his meds and begins to have a forbidden affair with his wife’s alternate personality.
     
  • “Bridge” by James Blish. This might be the first of his non-Star Trek work I’ve read. A West in decline builds a scientific installation in Jupiter’s atmosphere, and workers use virtual reality gear to man repair and building robots in the hostile environment. A supervisor, crankier than the other employees, might be going mad. Notable now for projecting the US-Soviet conflict as lasting hundreds of years into the future.
     
  • “There Is A Tide” by Brian Aldiss. In a future Africa, a grand planner runs into some difficulty with his grand plans when mother nature does not work according to the plan, leading to extensive, catastrophic flooding. Also, thrown into the history as an aside, all white people have been killed, although I’m not sure whether this means in Africa or worldwide and what bearing this has on the story.
     
  • “Second Variety” by Philip K. Dick. After four years of a devestating US-Soviet war (those guys again!), the United States has developed small robots that can quickly infiltrate and destroy Soviet installations. But down in their automated factories, the robots have built themselves new models and unleashed them on both sides of the human conflict. Frankly, I found this to be the most contemporarily chilling story, but the main character of the story is entirely too credulous. Why aren’t more people in Philip K. Dick yarns untrusting?
     
  • “The Feeling of Power” by Isaac Asimov. Many years in the future, a low level technician amazes his betters with his ability to perform computations without a computer. This might give man an advantage in a long-running war with an alien (I think) adversary.
     
  • “Sense from the Thought Divide” by Mark Clifton. A researcher tries to use PSI energy to create antigravity pods.
     
  • “Resurrection” by A.E. Van Vogt. A research team from an invasive, conquering, and genocidal race visits a planet that had housed an advanced civilization. As part of their protocol in investigating new homes for their ever-burgeoning population, the resurrect a specimen of the civilization to find out what happened to it. Unfortunately, this specimen is very advanced indeed and outwits them in their efforts.
     
  • “Vintage Season” by Henry Kuttner. A man leases some rooms to some very strange people who come from very far away. He begins to suspect they’re from the future, and his house is a sought-after spot for a very nice May with some hints that something bad is coming. And it does.

Overall, in retrospect, these are some pretty grim tales that don’t necessarily present an optimistic view of the future. However, they’re very imaginative in that they go off in a variety of directions, and you’re not sure where they might end up. So each has the potential to be a treat in its own right. I liked the book, and I think this is shaping up to be a science fiction year for me already.

Books mentioned in this review:

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