Best Story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964 (Unabridged Version)

Still Bester.

van Vogt can still fuck off.

my shortlist would include "fondly fahrenheit", "it's a good life", "quest for saint aquin" and "surface tension". but really, there are SO MANY good stories in this box. when you can scan a list and remember the plot and characters and dialogue and awesome lines and scenes in each story, well, that's a good sign. or a really bad sign that i've read and reread this too many times.

i am voting for "scanners live in vain"

He tried to remember the days before he had gone into the Haberman Device, before he had been cut apart for the Up-and-Out. Had he always been subject to the rush of his emotions from his mind to his body, from his body back to his mind, confounding him so that he couldn't scan? But he hadn't been a Scanner then.
He knew what had hit him. Amid the roar of his own pulse, he knew. In the nightmare of the Up-and-Out, that smell had forced its way through to him, while their ship burned off Venus and the habermans fought the collapsing metal with their bare hands. He had scanned them: all were in Danger. Chestboxes went up to Overload and dropped to Dead all around him as he had moved from man to man, shoving the drifting corpses out of his way as he fought to scan each man in turn, to clamp vises on unnoticed broken legs, to snap the Sleeping Valve on men whose instruments showed that they were hopelessly near Overload. With men trying to work and cursing him for a Scanner while he, professional zeal aroused, fought to do his job and keep them alive in the Great Pain of Space, he had smelled that smell. It had fought its way along his rebuilt nerves, past the Haberman cuts, past all the safeguards of physical and mental discipline. In the wildest hour of tragedy, he had smelled aloud. He remembered it was like a bad cranching, connected with the fury and nightmare all around him. He had even stopped his work to scan himself, fearful that the First Effect might come, breaking past all haberman cuts and ruining him with the Pain of Space. But he had come through. His own instruments stayed and stayed at Danger, without nearing Overload. He had done his job, and won a commendation for it. He had even forgotten the burning ship.
All except the smell.
And here the smell was all over again—the smell of meat-with-fire . . .

"How, O Scanners, are habermans made?"
"They are made with the cuts. The brain is cut from the heart, the lungs. The brain is cut from the ears, the nose. The brain is cut from the mouth, the belly. The brain is cut from desire, and pain. The brain is cut from the world. Save for the eyes. Save for the control of the living flesh."
"And how, O Scanners, is flesh controlled?"
"By the boxes set in the flesh, the controls set in the chest, the signs made to rule the living body, the signs by which the body lives."
"How does a haberman live and live?"
"The haberman lives by control of the boxes."
"Whence come the habermans?"
Martel felt in the coming response a great roar of broken voices echoing through the room as the Scanners, habermans themselves, put sound behind their mouthings:
"Habermans are the scum of Mankind. Habermans are the weak, the cruel, the credulous, and the unfit. Habermans are the sentenced-to-more-than-death. Habermans live in the mind alone. They are killed for Space but they live for Space. They master the ships that connect the Earths. They live in the Great Pain while ordinary men sleep in the cold cold sleep of the transit."
"Brothers and Scanners, I ask you now: are we habermans or are we not?"
"We are habermans in the flesh. We are cut apart, brain and flesh. We are ready to go to the Up-and-Out. All of us have gone through the Haberman Device."
"We are habermans then?" Vomact's eyes flashed and glittered as he asked the ritual question.
Again the chorused answer was accompanied by a roar of voices heard only by Martel: "Habermans we are, and more, and more. We are the Chosen who are habermans by our own free will. We are the Agents of the Instrumentality of Mankind."

i hate the far=right pro-gun libertarian message in that van vogt story but there are so many irresistible parts in it that i still like it a lot. the schlubby narrator, his overbearing wife, the scene w/ the giant computer room, the bucolic setting, etc etc

"Mars is Heaven" is incredibly creepy but I don't really know any of these.

"Scanners" is probably what I'm voting for. I recently reread it and was a little surprised to find that Cordwainer Smith seemed to be out of print except for The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith published by NESFA Press. I borrowed the one copy in the New York Public Library.

Hm, I guess they have two copies and I guess Simon and Schuster put out some stuff recently, including an anthology called When The People Fell.

Thought of Smith in connection with the cat nuns who showed up in Dr. Who a year or so back. Unique writer, deserves a cult following.

The Scanner's Oath reminds me of the "That Is The Law" refrain from "The Island of Dr. Moreau" which wouldn't be the only thing he got from that book, but that's cool with me.

Scanners is great, but "Fondly Fahrenheit" is probably one of the dozen best stories ever in any genre. Bester at the top of his game >>> almost anyone.

"The Cold Equations" is a hard science fiction classic, but I've always found it a bit silly myself.

Bester at the top of his game >>> almost anyone.
Yeah, the big two novels and the best short stories are aces. Could never get into the later stuff like The Computer Connection though.

Yeah he wasn't at the top of his game for very long sadly.

"The Cold Equations" is a hard science fiction classic, but I've always found it a bit silly myself.
Yup. I think that point was discussed here
The 1980's science fiction movie poll
and here TS: sci-fi vs. fantasy!

Nonetheless, it still gets to me.

xpost: I'd still like to see the long-mooted Stars My Destination movie, from someone who knows what to do with it.

i might've voted for "st aquin" if i hadn't read "a canticle for leibowitz"

can i also say that i really like "twilight". especially the part where the dude finds the completely abandoned but still functional automated zeppelin hanger and takes a cross-country trip on a zeppelin over a totally depopulated but still immaculate america. it's pathetic and beautiful at the same time, like a lonely sunday afternoon for the entire human race.

I think Morrissey wrote a song about that.

I don't know enough of these to vote, I think. But "Fondly Fahrenheit" would be tough to beat.

My daughter got a college bud (female) to read "The Cold Equations" and it upset the friend so much that they're pretty much not friends anymore.

did she preface it by saying "the girl in the story reminds me of you" or something like that

PILOT = ME, GIRL = YOU, PLS READ LOL

Hahaha

Of the ones I know, and though I find his novels fairly unreadable, I have a soft spot for Asimov's 'Nightfall'.

hahaha, my daughter reminded me of some of the details. The friend read the story and was really upset, and my daughter was kinda "uhhh....it's not really worth getting this wound up over, ok?" And then another friend in the dorm came by and my daughter mentioned the story and the 3rd friend said "Yeah, I read that...really good story." And friend 2 asked friend 3 if he had been really emotionally steamrolled like she had, friend 3 says "no not really," friend 2 is suddenly all "OH MY GOD YOU GUYS HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO HUMAN EMOTIONS BLOOO HOOO HOOO HOO HOW COULD YOU BAWWWWWWWWW" and my daughter and friend 3 just sort of look at each other and back away slowly.

It's a *good* poll.

The polls must roll (bump)

bleugh, the edition i got was some crappy uk version missing half the stories - vol 1 of vol 1 it would seem. managed to source a 'fair' copy of the second vol from a 3-starred bookseller, fingers xed it arrives and is not too beat up.

i kind of applaud anyone living their convictions enough to stop talking to someone bcz they thought 'the cold equations' wz a good story -- ! joanna russ absolutely detests it as i recall (from 'how to suppress women's writing', maybe): wasn't it one of the spurs to 'we who are about to', which is one of the most devastating things done in SF

is this an american anthology? i think my developmental equivalent to it would be the brian aldiss penguin book of SF, but maybe i'm just a newjack

man, some of these sound familiar but i can't say for sure that i've read any besides asimov and bester.

ive read Asimov, Bradbury, Matheson, Boucher, Clarke, Bester, Keyes and Zelazny. 'nightfall' is the most fun because of the dorky plot twist, but 'fondly fahrenheit' really takes the cake here.

"is this an american anthology?"

Yes.

the moral of fondly fahrenheit is that robots are terrible lyricists

Politics aside, I really like the Van Vogt. What's the deal with "The Cold Equations"?

It's mean.

Turns out the van Vogt I've read was 'The Seesaw', not 'The Weapon Shop'. The latter is even more offensive! The gun-nut philosophy in 'The Seesaw' is just the backdrop for a nice little universe creation story. 'The Weapon Shop' is batshit right-wing libertarianism to its very core, and the whole set-up is so bizarre and fake.

^^^ this is what makes it cool

It's been a long time, but scenes from "Coming Attraction" jumped back into my brain when I read the title -- Fritz Leiber channeling Ballard in 1950?

xpost: I first encountered true batshit right-wing libertarianism through reading SF in the 70's, mostly writers associated with John W. Campbell/Astounding/Analog. Then it took over the world.

Has to be said that some of them, Heinlein and Van Vogt not excluded, could still turn out a decent Space Opera when they weren't doing political rants.

I don't even think Heinlein as being a libertarian. That dude was just a right-wing nutjob.

Plus wrote some very entertaining books. Somehow the sci-fi context makes it much easier for me to tolerate this kind of thinking. Dunno why.

He also wrote for thirty years and changed quite a lot over that time. Towards the end of his career, I remember overhearing older fans seriously speculating that he might have tertiary syphilis.

Xpost: seem to remember that Ballard had quite a lot of time for Leiber. He's certainly one of my all time faves, though more for his horror/fantasy stuff than the pure SF. A true and original stylist.

I have collection of Leiber sci-fi shorts that I've never read. I really should pick it up. I tend to find his novels a bit tedious.

I think "The Green Millennium" is set in pretty much the same world as "Coming Attraction". The sexuality in his fifties' work is astonishingly sophisticated for its time.

Read almost half of these so far and for an all time 'hall of fame' I must say I'm less than impressed. "A Martian Odyssey" is just a mostly unimaginative menagerie story - I don't think it can be excused for its early date, since Wells and Rice-Burroughs had tackled similar ground 20+ years previously. "Helen O'Loy" is more of its time - ie quaintly sexist. "The Weapon Shop" I've blathered on about already. "Arena" and "First Contact" are both just rather pulpy. Obviously influenced by the war, there's just a shred of a "war is stupid" theme in the first which could have been developed much more; but the fatalist xenophobia in the second I just find bizarre.

I see that everyone here's repping for stories in the second half though, so still looking forward to that.

You might have enjoyed those stories more if you had read this book when you were thirteen like the rest of us.

U SAYIN SKIFFY IS FOR KIDS?!1/!?!?!1/1

No, but corny stuff like "Helen O'Loy" might be.

You have to make allowances for stuff from the 30's - 40's pulp era: the prose can be rough'n'ready, and ideas that were new then have been recycled on the hour on Sci-Fi channel for years now.

progris report 1 -janyuarie 13

Man, I can't believe I didn't get a hold of copy of this book again until today. Not going to change my vote though.

From intro to "Riders of the Purple Wage"

One of the questions was "Tell me, Mr. Farmer, how do you keep up to date in science so that you can write your science fiction stories?"
That was a stunner for me. I had never heard of such a thing. At the time, I was teaching biochemistry at a medical school full time and a textbook I had helped write was going into its second edition, so I had to keep up in biochemistry. But keeping up in science in general? And for science fiction?
Phil took it calmly. He said, "For one thing, I subscribe to Scientific American."
I was staggered. If Phil, who is a lot less "heavy science" than I am, feels it necessary to keep up with science what am I doing just lounging around?
I could hardly wait to get home to send in my subscription to Scientific American, (a subscription I still have) and to begin to work at keeping up. I don't know that it ever affected my science fiction much, but I'll tell you this: since 1954 I have written dozens of non-fiction books covering just about every field of science, and one of the reasons I can do so dates back to that one remark of Phil Farmer.
Thanks, Phil!

OK, read all three Poul Anderson stories in this book of which two were grebt but one was terrible, and it's reasonably clear why.

Feel like this thread should be moved to I Love Books or retired in favor of the other rolling thread, but I still kind of like this thread and feel it has a purpose.

haha i dimly remember reading that asimov anecdote in one of his other books. that guy must have been the most lovable bad public speaker ever.

He basically brags about it in I, Asimov. Well, he describes it differently. How he was a highly paid, much in-demand public speaker who could get the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand in no time flat and was uncannily able to stop on a dime at exactly the appointed hour within reference to a watch or clock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU-QExgydz0

Just reread - okay listened to the audiobook of - the novel version of Flowers of Algernon, and gotta say it still packs a punch, extremely well thought through and executed.

Aargh, sleepy fat fingers onto small screen, I really pulled a Charlie Gordon that time, Flowers for Algernon

How do they do the bit on audio where he goes punctuation berserk? That's my favourite bit.

This poll result surprises and confuses me.

Like is “Flowers for Algernon” something other than an exploitative bit of premise?

It's a well-done tearjerker at least, the more poignant for sure if you know or are someone with cognitive struggles---duh everybody in some way---guess it got some points for novelty when first published (not many stories about "slow" people then) but the deeper or more lingering (than novelty) impression, via unusual aspect of subject (also in there: experimental treatments which work, but only for a while---and it was published after and amid all these well-publicized treatments for "curable" conditions).

So exploitation is also part of its subject---is he in some way better off for this experience, at least in terms of a few, increasingly and perhaps mercifully dimming memories---?

How do they do the bit on audio where he goes punctuation berserk? That's my favourite bit.

There is one plausible interpretation in which one could think of it as a story that is relevant to anyone who has not necessarily been surgically altered but whose intellectual development has outstripped their emotional -and also, Keyes/smart Charlie states, spiritual- development.

Okay, the narrator pauses for every comma in the first and last sentence of that Progress Report.

xpost yeah was thinking along those lines and others re someone with cognitive struggles---duh everybody in some way-

Yeah, I probably should have said I was agreeing with what you were saying.

The movie was okay, wasn't it? Been a long tyme since I've seen it, but Cliff Robertson was prob okay, and it had Charlie going to a go-go, strobe lights, girls in white boots---tryin' to get those crazy kids back in the seats, but then why wouldn't he, go Charlie go! (Soundtrack by Ravi Shankar, for Charlie's messed-with karma.)

Dunno, haven't seen since we watched in ninth grade English class, although I did just read Daniel Keyes impression of it in his memoir Algernon, Charlie and I: A Writer's Journey. But hey, I see that somebody put Charly on youtube for the nonce.

Robert Silverberg edited a collection including several of these, with essays of analysis and appreciation for each - a book I loved, and thoroughly recommend.
https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Silverbergs-Worlds-Wonder-Exploring/dp/0446513695

Yeah that book is great. I have an ebook of it under an alternate title, Science Fiction 101: The Craft of Science Fiction.

Which reminds me that another audiobook I recently enjoyed was Brian Aldiss’s Non-Stop. (The first chapter of “Hothouse” is in that Silverberg collection)

Prior to World of Wonder, Silverberg also edited the Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthologies that this poll is based on. IIRC, Silverbob massaged the poll results a bit to get a good overall spread of authors, types of story, eras, etc. His choices are generally excellent, tho' I can't quite understand his enthusiasm for Blish's 'Surface Tension', which I find pretty dull (might well have been more remarkable in 1952 of course).

I have these British editions:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51uqgQy-FPL._SX303_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51o%2BZk-ARSL._SX296_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

"Surface Tension" amazes me now, or not too long ago when I finally read it in the VanderMeers' accurately titled The Big Book of Science Fiction. Entirely possible that I'm at 1952 levels of appreciation, not to mention comprehension (I was an All-American tot then, bred on U-235-fortified mother's milk). Great cover pix, thanks! Also thanks to yall for mention and endorsements of those Silverb essays.

You know, James M, it seems that there is also a recent audiobook of the very book that is the subject of this poll, and in that case the reader of the shorter version of “Flowers for Algernon” really goes to town delivering each and every inflection in the section in which Charlie is infected with punctuation intoxication.

Someone with musical skills should sample that to make the next Avalanches single.

Indeed.

Linking this for the images, which you need to scroll down to see:
https://auxiliarymemory.com/2017/12/19/science-fiction-hall-of-fame-volume-one/

How do you think that punctuation hiccuping Charlie does compares with the chanting of the Scientific People in The Stars My Destination, James?

The mind boggles.

I know there's at least one UK edition of 'The Stars My Destination' that helpfully deformatted all the weird typography, putting it into regular paragraphs and ruining the effect.

Recently there have also been audiobooks of Volume IIA and now Volume IIB. Also found this review by Theodore Sturgeon:
https://www.nytimes.com/1973/04/22/archives/if.html

Finally, came across some interesting comments out there by James Gunn, in which he references Volume II, about why the novelette is the ideal length for sf, but they are buried in google books links so am not going to link.

Not the screenwriter, James Gunn, but the sf writer and academic.

Curious about his anthology series, The Road To Science Fiction, but seems hard to get a hold of.

It seems like at least half of these have been adapted into TV/movies. Weird that Mimsy would be the most recent one.

I only have volume three of the Gunn series, 'From Heinlein to Here', covering the period 1940 to 1977. Good selection of stories, lots of crossover with other the Hall of Fame anthologies as you might expect; don't remember the surrounding editorial matter being that compelling, but would need to revisit to confirm.

Have recently worked my way through a couple of volumes of Hugo Award winning stories edited by Asimov, covering the periods 1955 to 1967. Again, some crossover with these anthologies. With your indulgence (or without), here are my rankings:

The Darfstellar - Walter M Miller 6/10
Allamagoosa - Eric Frank Russell 7/10
Exploration Team - Murray Leinster 7/10 (not the best story in these collections, but the one that most seemed like it would most make a great movie - giant mutated bears! hordes of horrible alien creatures!)
The Star - Arthur C Clarke 8/10
Or All the Seas With Oysters - Avram Davidson 6/10
The Big Front Yard - Clifford D Simak 7/10
The Hell-Bound Train - Robert Bloch 5/10
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes 8/10 (the ideas about intelligence and stupidity expressed here are obviously much more problematic nowadays, but as a piece of storytelling this is still pretty fine)
The Longest Voyage - Poul Anderson 5/10
The Dragon Masters - Jack Vance 7/10
No Truce With Kings - Poul Anderson 2/10 (an unbelievably tedious sci-fi retelling of the American Civil War. Kinda hate Poul Anderson now.)
Soldier, Ask Not - Gordon R Dickson 6/10
'Repent Harlequin', said the Ticktockman - Harlan Ellison 7/10 (yes the author is a terrible arse, and the hepcat writing style has dated badly, but after the stodge of Anderson this definitely felt like a leap into modernity and you can still see why it had such an impact at the time)
The Last Castle - Jack Vance 9/10 (Vance at his best - a baroque melding of fantasy, historical and classic SF ficion tropes)
Neutron Star - Larry Niven 6/10 (reminded me a little of Delany's Nova, which is less hard science than the Niven, and therefore much more to my taste)

The Big Front Yard - Clifford D Simak

this is the one where the hoverbike riding aliens are impressed by paint, yeah?

oh look there they are:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3c/The_Big_Front_Yard.jpg/220px-The_Big_Front_Yard.jpg

LOL yep, that's a fantastically literal cover painting that gives away the ending. There's a lot of folksy yarn-spinning before that.

Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novelette, 1959

Thanks, Ward. I remember reading those two Poul Anderson stories in that book, liking the first one well enough and hating the other one, so much I did not finish it

Simak? Folksy yarn-spinning? No way.

Never happened

This anthology series I have never seen or heard of until today, edited by guess-who, looks pretty interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_(anthology_series)?wprov=sfti1

Amazing looking stuff.

For real! A bunch of great stuff i know plus a bunch of stuff I’ve been looking for, like Wilhelm’s “Baby, You Were Great”

'Baby, You Were Great' also included in Pamela Sargent's first Women of Wonder anthology.

At the same time as the Alpha series, Silverbob was also editing the all-original New Dimensions series too. Dude was just insanely productive in the late 60s/early 70s.

Yeah, edited a lot of one-off anthologies as well, I think

Of course, those Alphas are not originals, like the New Dimensions were, I think, but still. “Baby, You Were Great” is from Orbit, for instance.

And can also be found in The Best From Orbit.

I have this nice UK paperback edition of Orbit 2, where the Wilhelm made its first appearance:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/413FfkCenfL.SX316.SY316.jpg

I only have a battered copy of the UK Orbit 1 paperback, but I love the cover:

https://pictures.abebooks.com/ELLEPOTTER/md/md20882515571.jpg