(about the radio-wave critters that send us back to the age of steam); the best are probably the zany "Placet is a Crazy Place" and "Etaoin Shrdlu" (mishaps in the printing business pop up repeatedly: might give this to a printer friend, if you have one), with the thoughtful "Letter to a Phoenix."
But by far the freshest feature of this particular collection is that Fredric Brown—to belie the old axiom that you can't have good short-short science fiction—has inserted nine brand-new two-page dillies between the other stories. They have the unexpected quirks that we've come to expect of Brown. They'd make wonderful blackout skits for some fan group to stage at a convention, or for a 16-mm movie bug to produce. Who'll try it?
This slight but beautifully written novelette may not appeal to readers who want their time travel robust and gadgety. Its mood and method are more nearly those of "Berkeley Square" than of "The Man Who Mastered Time."
Melanie Langdon, recovering from tuberculosis and eager to be reunited with her husband and seven-months-old son, falls asleep on an ugly Victorian chaise longue—and wakes in 1864, in the body of Milly Baines, dying of the same disease on the same chaise longue. Half participant, half spectator, she plays out the tragedy of Milly's last hours.
Let's hope that this talented English novelist turns again to the borderlands of fantasy and science fiction.
This seems to have been the last of the Ballantine science fiction to be published in both hard-bound and pocket-book formats. It was originally scheduled for last winter, but was postponed until Collier's had serialized a condensation. Coming from the author of seven "serious" novels, well done and well received, it isstrangely flat and unsatisfying.
The theme is very much like Kornbluth's "Takeoff": a secret scientific task-force has been working somewhere along the California coast to put the "Black Planet," the first space station, into an orbit and achieve military dominance of the planet. When the secret leaks out, America's former allies are as determined to smash the dragon's egg in its nest as are more obvious enemies. Meanwhile there are inner jealousies and clashes of temperament on the project, which lead to the narrator-director's being arrested for treason.
Interwoven with this is the kind of scientific puzzle that has been most characteristic of John Taine's books:
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