3 / 5 Stars
'Stellar 4' (230 pp.) was published by Ballantine / Del Rey in May, 1978, and features cover art by H. R. Van Dongen.
By 1978 the 'Stellar' series was a success, validating editor Judy-Lynn Del Rey's belief that the sci-fi readership at large was tiring of the New Wave aesthetic, and well ready to embrace anthologies that provided content in a more 'traditional' style.
As she states in a 1975 interview, at which time she was the sci-fi editor at Ballantine Books (and just two years away from founding the Del Rey imprint),
Basically, I’m looking for stories…with beginnings, middles, and ends. A story that will entertain the reader, keep him interested, make him want to come back and buy more Ballantine books. I’m not interested in the purely literary works that are around, unless they have a good story. They have to have a plot.
These deep philosophical novels that are being turned out by students from philosophy classes, you know, it sounds terrific to them, but it’s the same old stuff to us. It’s not adding anything, it’s not telling a story, and the idea that if somebody manages to sit down and type out sixty-thousand words, and those sixty-thousand words deserve to be published―it’s ridiculous.
My capsule summaries of the novelettes and stories in 'Stellar 4':
We Who Stole the Dream, by James Tiptree, Jr.: the Joilani are a race of diminutive, grey-skinned, pacifistic aliens, with the misfortune to have been living on a planet colonized by Terrans. These Terrans have forced the Joilani into slavery, of a particularly brutal and inhumane nature. But the Joilani have a desperate plan to escape the planet and make for a distant sector of space where, if the star charts are correct, their homeworld resides.......
This story has a grim, transgressive quality that contains notes of splatterpunk (!), and I was not expecting to see it in a 'Stellar' anthology. But it seems Del Rey was willing at times to embrace such material. 'We' can be seen as an allegory for the American involvement in Vietnam. It's the best story in the anthology, and in my opinion one of the best stories Tiptree, Jr. (aka Alice Sheldon) ever wrote.
Animal Lover, by Stephen R. Donaldson: in 1978, Donaldson was riding high on the success of his 'Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever' trilogy, and obviously he had a good working relationship with Judy-Lynn Del Rey, hence his inclusion in 'Stellar.' This novelette is something of a surprise. It's set in a near-future, dystopian USA, where the government encourages people to conduct canned hunts on private nature preserves, as a way of sublimating violent impulses.
One such preserve, the Sharon's Point Hunting Preserve in Missouri, has a disturbing record of high fatalities among its patrons. Federal Special Agent Sam Browne is sent on an undercover mission to find out what's going on at Sharon's Point.
'Animal Lover,' with its clipped, action-centered narrative, reads more like a men's adventure novel of the era (think 'The Executioner') than overwrought storytelling that characterized the Thomas Covenant franchise. I guess Donaldson deserves kudos for showing he can be versatile in his approaches to fiction writing.
Snake Eyes, by Alan Dean Foster: this novelette features Foster's Young Adult franchise characters 'Pip' and 'Flinx,' first introduced in his 1972 novel 'The Tar-Aiym Krang.' Pip is a miniature dragon, and Flinx, a human boy with burgeoning esp capabilities.
The plot involves an alliance between Flinx and a prospector to recover rare jewels from an inhospitable desert on the planet Moth. Some calculating members of the Mothian criminal element want in on the action. There are some complications, but in the end, a happy ending.
The Last Decision, by Ben Bova: the aging Emperor of the Federation is told that Earth's Sun is going to go nova, eliminating the home world of mankind. A young woman has a plan to save Earth, but the scientific establishment deems her plan unworkable. What will the Emperor decide ? Bova intended this story to demonstrate his allyship with feminism, but the story is very lumbering and overwritten. And, Bova never details how the plan to save Earth actually will work ! Constructing a story around a plot point that never is disclosed to the reader is just dumb.
The Deimos Plague, by by Charles Sheffield: testifying against the mob makes Henry Carver a marked man. Desperate to find a safe hiding place, he decides to emigrate to Mars. The only ship immediately available is the Deimos Dancer, a decrepit freighter needing a deck hand to tend to some 'special' cargo......a good story from Sheffield, ably plotted, with a twist ending.
Assassin, by James P. Hogan: the first half of this novelette is a well-plotted, technical account of an effort by an assassin to track down and execute a defector from the Mars colony. Unfortunately, the second half of the novelette consists of one long discourse on politics and economics, with some contrived, off-camera plot points involving matter transmission tossed into the mix. I was hoping for something better from Hogan.
Summing up, I'm going to give 'Stellar 4' a Three Star Rating. The entries from Tiptree, Donaldson, and Sheffield are among the better examples of late 70s sci-fi, and make obtaining this anthology worthwhile.
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