Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Orb Books (2009), Edition: First, 544 pages
Description
A must-read for any science fiction fan, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume Two John W. Campbell, Jr. Lester del Rey Robert A. Heinlein C. M. Kornbluth Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore Eric Frank Russell Cordwainer Smith Theodore Sturgeon H. G. Wells Jack Williamson.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Stevil2001
After really enjoying Volume One of this series, I was all set to enjoy Volume Two, which was divided into two halves because it would have been outrageously big. As it is, Volume Two A is already pretty big. I don't know what it was, though, but Volume Two A didn't impress me anywhere near as much
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as Volume One, which was filled with stories I thought were excellent-- and rightly so, given that they were supposed to be the definitively best short stories published prior to 1964. But the best novellas of the same time period were pretty average for the most part. There were some standouts, however: I really liked Universe by Robert A. Heinlein even though I thought it felt like half a story. (Wikipedia has informed me that it is half a story; Heinlein connected it with another novella later on to make a full novel.) Cyril M. Kornbluth's The Marching Morons was also good fun. My favorite of the book was probably Vintage Season by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, a surprisingly affecting story about tourists from the distant future and their effect on one man. Show Less
LibraryThing member tlingit
I ought to seek out the other books that are published. I have read this book while healing in the hospital. These stories go beyond science fiction and into classic stories that presented some unique ideas that I found through other media when I was younger. I'd read Baby is Three as a graphic
This is classic Science Fiction at it's best. I hope to be able to find the other books and read more.
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novel: More Human Than Human published by Heavy Metal. Of course "Who Goes There?" was made into a movie but the second incarnation by John Carpenter is what made me seek out the story and read it. "The Marching Morons" was a story I think I found in one of my Father's old scifi magazines. And H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" has been done so many times I had to read it to make sure nothing was left out. "Call Me Joe" begs the question: whoever wrote Avatar, did they read this short story?This is classic Science Fiction at it's best. I hope to be able to find the other books and read more.
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LibraryThing member librisissimo
"The greatest Science Fiction novellas of all time, chosen by the members of the Science fiction Writers of America".
Anderson: "Call Me Joe" Immortality in sequential bodies. Interesting thesis on virtual reality and mind transfers. Great prediction of virtual "waldoes": just expand the computer
Campbell: "Who Goes There?" Antarctic variation on "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". Rather gruesome.
Del Rey: "Nerves" Atomic plant disaster. Now we can compare the responses to the Japanese disaster of 2010. Chronacrhonism: visual phones and switchboards.
Heinlein: "Universe" Not really a story about the exaggerated idea of the efficacy of major mutations (think X-men); Joe-Jim is a common Siamese-twin phenomenon. Did the story come before the book?
Kornbluth: "The Marching Morons" Dumbing down the population because the "elites" eliminated or restricted their progeny. Actually, most abortions occur among low-income blacks, but there are enough in the DINK cohort to support his thesis. If, of course, the high-stakes couples are really all that smart; just how widely are dumbth and IQ spread in the general population? And I wonder if the people running the world really would be that conscientious in the first place? Extended onerous charity is a hard row to hoe.
O'Donnell (Kuttner & Moore): "Vintage Season"Time traveling dilettantes of the future. Seems to be the most complex of the stories in this volume.
Russell: "..And Then Ther Were None" Obs for the Gandians are fun, but break down pretty soon in practice: bartering is an inexact art at best, and quickly falls apart in the face of memory lapse, bad will, and plain ignorance. Setting the value of the Obs and then storing that value until used is the whole point of inventing money in the first place. (Consider the Aesopian parable of the Baker and the Butcher, on the inclination to cheat; and the real controversy stirred up in the Cream Bargain in LDS history.) On the plus side, Freedom does sometimes boil down to the right to say "no" AND HAVE IT STICK.
Smith: I confess -- I never did get much out of the story of C'mell, Maybe it's just me.
Sturgeon: "Baby is Three" Yes, it still is that good. However, psychotherapy is only as good as the doctor providing it. Quibble: Is Baby actually interpreting the data he receives (he does give advice), or acting more like a living Wikipedia?
Wells: The 19th-centry writing style is not the fashion anymore, but carries the action well-enough. Any prudent adventurer would have done short, verifiable trips first (see one of Asimov's robot stories), but Wells had to move quickly into his philosophical section. The contrast of "civilizations" is still great fodder for discourse. And, of course, one can speculate as to whether the world would really be so duolithic. My major problem has always been the length of time posited (we're talking ice-age epochs here).
Williamson: "With Folded Hands" Nanny state on steroids. The ultimate end of Asimov's First Law, which he also explores in "Liar" and other stories. Admirable prediction of cloud-computing. Chronaticism: Interstellar travel, robots, and clothes lines. Quibble: You can't get any royalties from patents until you sell them to someone.
Anderson: "Call Me Joe" Immortality in sequential bodies. Interesting thesis on virtual reality and mind transfers. Great prediction of virtual "waldoes": just expand the computer
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driven biologics of today.Campbell: "Who Goes There?" Antarctic variation on "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". Rather gruesome.
Del Rey: "Nerves" Atomic plant disaster. Now we can compare the responses to the Japanese disaster of 2010. Chronacrhonism: visual phones and switchboards.
Heinlein: "Universe" Not really a story about the exaggerated idea of the efficacy of major mutations (think X-men); Joe-Jim is a common Siamese-twin phenomenon. Did the story come before the book?
Kornbluth: "The Marching Morons" Dumbing down the population because the "elites" eliminated or restricted their progeny. Actually, most abortions occur among low-income blacks, but there are enough in the DINK cohort to support his thesis. If, of course, the high-stakes couples are really all that smart; just how widely are dumbth and IQ spread in the general population? And I wonder if the people running the world really would be that conscientious in the first place? Extended onerous charity is a hard row to hoe.
O'Donnell (Kuttner & Moore): "Vintage Season"Time traveling dilettantes of the future. Seems to be the most complex of the stories in this volume.
Russell: "..And Then Ther Were None" Obs for the Gandians are fun, but break down pretty soon in practice: bartering is an inexact art at best, and quickly falls apart in the face of memory lapse, bad will, and plain ignorance. Setting the value of the Obs and then storing that value until used is the whole point of inventing money in the first place. (Consider the Aesopian parable of the Baker and the Butcher, on the inclination to cheat; and the real controversy stirred up in the Cream Bargain in LDS history.) On the plus side, Freedom does sometimes boil down to the right to say "no" AND HAVE IT STICK.
Smith: I confess -- I never did get much out of the story of C'mell, Maybe it's just me.
Sturgeon: "Baby is Three" Yes, it still is that good. However, psychotherapy is only as good as the doctor providing it. Quibble: Is Baby actually interpreting the data he receives (he does give advice), or acting more like a living Wikipedia?
Wells: The 19th-centry writing style is not the fashion anymore, but carries the action well-enough. Any prudent adventurer would have done short, verifiable trips first (see one of Asimov's robot stories), but Wells had to move quickly into his philosophical section. The contrast of "civilizations" is still great fodder for discourse. And, of course, one can speculate as to whether the world would really be so duolithic. My major problem has always been the length of time posited (we're talking ice-age epochs here).
Williamson: "With Folded Hands" Nanny state on steroids. The ultimate end of Asimov's First Law, which he also explores in "Liar" and other stories. Admirable prediction of cloud-computing. Chronaticism: Interstellar travel, robots, and clothes lines. Quibble: You can't get any royalties from patents until you sell them to someone.
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LibraryThing member datrappert
Pretty much every story a classic. Would be a great gift for a new science fiction reader. (Along with its companion volume.)
LibraryThing member ikeman100
Another great collection of the best of SF classic stories as chosen by SF authors. These are the stories that would have gotten Nebula awards if the award existed earlier in the 20th century.
Book 1 was limited to short stories. This book, edited by Ben Bova, was a collection of novellas or
I had forgotten how good these stories are.
Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson
Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. (as Don A. Stuart)
Nerves by Lester del Rey
Universe by Robert A. Heinlein
The Marching Morons by C. M. Kornbluth
Vintage Season by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (as Lawrence O'Donnell)
And Then There Were None by Eric Frank Russell
The Ballad of Lost C'Mell by Cordwainer Smith
Baby Is Three by Theodore Sturgeon
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
With Folded Hands by Jack Williamson
Book 1 was limited to short stories. This book, edited by Ben Bova, was a collection of novellas or
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novelettes. It is called 2A because there were so many they decided it needed to be two books.I had forgotten how good these stories are.
Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson
Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. (as Don A. Stuart)
Nerves by Lester del Rey
Universe by Robert A. Heinlein
The Marching Morons by C. M. Kornbluth
Vintage Season by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (as Lawrence O'Donnell)
And Then There Were None by Eric Frank Russell
The Ballad of Lost C'Mell by Cordwainer Smith
Baby Is Three by Theodore Sturgeon
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
With Folded Hands by Jack Williamson
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LibraryThing member tungsten_peerts
I almost wrote "it's hard for me to review this," since this was a treasured volume when I was an sf-devouring teenager, but it really isn't.
In a way, I wish it was. Hard, that is.
The SFWA-generated "Hall of Fame" volumes are good introductions to the whole "Golden Age" (it should really be
At this distance, even granting cultural this and historical that, it's hard for me to escape the feeling that the level of writing simply isn't very high. I know, I know: sacrilege! But reading through "Who Goes There?", though it proves anew how much more faithful to the source material John Carpenter was than Hawks, et al, really demonstrates that Campbell was a pretty bad writer. It's often difficult to tell exactly what's happening in "Who Goes There?" and although some of this is due to the attempt on the author's part to replicate a certain slangy way of speaking (as far as I can tell he fails miserably at this), most of it is due to the lumpiness of the prose. Cripes, is "tensity" even a word? Don't you mean "tension," Mr. Campbell? And it doesn't help that the author is predictably mired in a "Big Bronzed Men Doing Man Things in a Manly Way" place: boy does this kind of thing become tiresome after a while. It's not hard to see, reading this, where the obnoxious-ness of later Heinlein came from ... it's all here.
More to come.
In a way, I wish it was. Hard, that is.
The SFWA-generated "Hall of Fame" volumes are good introductions to the whole "Golden Age" (it should really be
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"Golden Age Plus" since many of the stories post-date the typically-demarcated "Golden Age" of science fiction -- and one, the Wells, significantly pre-dates it) canon of science fiction -- as long as you don't think about it too much. At this distance, even granting cultural this and historical that, it's hard for me to escape the feeling that the level of writing simply isn't very high. I know, I know: sacrilege! But reading through "Who Goes There?", though it proves anew how much more faithful to the source material John Carpenter was than Hawks, et al, really demonstrates that Campbell was a pretty bad writer. It's often difficult to tell exactly what's happening in "Who Goes There?" and although some of this is due to the attempt on the author's part to replicate a certain slangy way of speaking (as far as I can tell he fails miserably at this), most of it is due to the lumpiness of the prose. Cripes, is "tensity" even a word? Don't you mean "tension," Mr. Campbell? And it doesn't help that the author is predictably mired in a "Big Bronzed Men Doing Man Things in a Manly Way" place: boy does this kind of thing become tiresome after a while. It's not hard to see, reading this, where the obnoxious-ness of later Heinlein came from ... it's all here.
More to come.
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Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1973
Physical description
544 p.; 8.2 inches
ISBN
0765305356 / 9780765305350