Book Review: New Writings in SF 1

Book Review: 'New Writings in SF 1' edited by John Carnell

2 / 5 Stars

'New Writings in SF 1' (147 pp) first was published in the UK in 1964; this Bantam Books edition was released in April 1966. The cover illustration, 'Cosmograph #28', is by Photo-Lettering, Inc.

This was the inaugural volume of what would eventually be 30 'New Writings' anthologies. All of the stories in this first volume were written exclusively for the anthology.

In his Forward, editor Carnell invokes the term 'speculative fiction' as a necessary and appropriate substitute for the term 'science fiction'. This is one of the first instances I can recall of seeing this term employed in the sci-fi literature. Carnell states that the New Writings series will serve as a bridge between the older, outdated field of sci-fi and the innovative and forward-looking discipline of speculative fiction.

In reviewing the entries in 'New Writings' I try to adopt a more forgiving attitude, as these stories come from the mid-60s, when the writing skills of the majority of sci-fi authors were not as.........adroidt.........as they were in the following decades.

My capsule summaries of the contents:

Key to Chaos, by Edward Mackin: this novelette features Mackin's recurring character 'Hek Belov', who is something of a con man. Here, Belov teams up with a so-called inventor named Frank Tetchum to swindle a wealthy magnate by selling him a machine capable of manufacturing military hardware.

Even by the standards of 1964, this story is quite lame in its efforts at satiric humor. Reliant on frequent passages of stilted dialogue, 'Key' was a chore to get through.

'Two's Company' by John Rankine (the pseudonym of Douglas R. Mason): Dag Fletcher, a square-jawed spaceman (and a recurring character in Rankine's short stories), is assigned to duty on a planet undergoing terraformation. His co-worker is a stunning blonde named Meryl who - gasp ! - shows no inclination to sleep with him. Of course, by the story's end, this aberration will be rectified. What can I say ? Even by the standards of 1964, this story had an un-Woke character to it.

Man on Bridge, by Brian Aldiss: in a near-future Europe, the Lumpen Proletariat have come into power, and bourgeoise intellectuals are interred in camps. The opening pages are very effective in portraying an Orwellian, dystopian milieu, but as the story progresses the plot takes some unconvincing turns. It's too bad, because this could have been a memorable entry from Aldiss.

Haggard Honeymoon, by Joseph R. Green and James Webbert: the planet Haggard is blessed with an unusually rich deposit of uranium. The problem is, the men who mine it tend to go insane if they are employed for more than five and one-half months......

A competent novelette, although I thought the revelation behind the mystery of the 'insane' miners was a bit contrived.

The Sea's Furthest End, by Damien Broderick: an early novelette from Australian writer Broderick. In the far future, the grim and unforgiving Emperor Malvara seeks to unite the galaxy by force, but his son, Prince Aylan, is adamant that force is counterproductive. Which vision ultimately will prevail ?

This story is very very earnest, and at time overwrought, in its efforts to imbue the 'Galactic Empire' trope with a heavy dose of humanism. The closing passage tries to expand the plot to the 'cosmic' realm, but with mixed success.

Summing up, 'New Writings in SF 1' shows a genre slowly advancing towards the New Wave era and in that regard remains a viable snapshot of sci-fi in a particular time and place. For that reason, completists may want to pick up a copy.