Frederik Pohl's "The Kindly Isle" (short story, biological weapons, free)

A government agency in cold war era US is building biological weapons for possible use against Russians. One of its researchers has developed a virus that affects a part of the brain that's supposed to drive the infected person nuts, only the effect is a bit different - it makes the infected person irritable & nasty. On the day of his triumph, the scientist vanishes with all the data - so the government no longer has the weapon.

Years later, a colleague sights the scientist on an idle isle, & suspects he has been testing the virus for selling to highest bidder. But subsequent investigation with throw up a completely different direction of his research...

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, November 1984.
Download full text from Baen eBooks.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Frederik Pohl.

William Tenn's "The Sickness" (novelette): A cure for cold war mistrust between US & USSR

This is a story of two epidemics caused by bugs - one physical & literal, other metaphorical as in US/USSR standoff. Knowing Tenn, I won't be surprised if he intended it as a satire on cold war war-mongering at both ends.

Story summary.

US & USSR not only are constantly at each other's throat, they also have independent programs to send people to Mars. An India-mediated joint expedition to Mars might hopefully help understanding & ease tensions - so the ship that goes there contains an equal number of Americans & Russians but with the condition that Americans will only speak Russian & Russians only English during the expedition.

On Mars, they'll find a vast & ancient underground city - still kept alive by machines though its inhabitants are long dead. Human explorer to the city will return infected with a highly contagious (via breathing) bug, & quickly infect the whole expedition. They'll nearly die out, but there is a miracle waiting - both for their personal sickness, & of humanity's sickness back on earth...

Collected in.

1.  William Tenn's "Time in Advance".

Fact sheet.

First published: Infinity Science Fiction, November 1955.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of William Tenn.

Fritz Leiber's "The Creature from Cleveland Depths" aka "The Lone Wolf" (novella, gadgets, free): Who could imagine mobile phones would be so evil?

Well, the story is from long before mobile phones were around, so the gadget (the "tickler") here looks different & works differently.

It begins as an organizer - you tell it to remind you of certain events, & it will at the right time. Reminding is by telling about the event in your ear via an in-ear headphone, plus an insistent "tickling" using two rollers mounted on your shoulder. It runs a very long (audio) magnetic tape - one run lasts a week, with buttons to forward quickly to a certain time. To set an event, you move it specific date/time next week, then speak of the event into it. After you've set the events, the device runs the tape continuously. But most of it is blank, so you don't hear anything till an event is due.

Soon improvements in upgraded versions give it a life all its own, threatening the very human existence...

Very funny early parts & ending, but I thought it was draggy in the middle as the mood begin to set for impending disaster.

Notes.

1. "Depths" of the title has cold war linkage - "Free World" vs Soviet Union. Because of bomb scare most people live in massive underground caverns that double as bomb shelters. Only a few "outers" live on the surface.
2. "Creature" of the title is an advanced form of the tickler gadget.

See also.

1. L Sprague de Camp's "Alanias" (download as part of a larger package): Another story where a voice whispers propaganda into your ear without your conscious self realizing you are being manipulated.

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy, December 1962.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks. [via Becky@ClassicScienceFiction]
Download audio version read by Gregg Margarite from LibriVox.
Alternate audio link at Internet Archive.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Fritz Leiber.

Murray Leinster's "Historical Note" (short story, satire, free): What if personal flyers became a reality?

I have a feeling I've read this before, though I didn't remember the details.

It's both a lampooning of communist Soviet Union & a science fictional "what if" on small personal flyers. Indian readers should find some of the idiocy of the lampooning parts familiar.

Collected in.

1. John W Campbell, Jr (ed)'s "The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology".

See also.

1. Clifford D Simak's "City" (novelette, 1944): Leinster's version also deals with the central idea (how suburbs will be remade if personal fliers became widely owned) of this widely loved story, but only in a passing way.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, February 1951.
Read online at Docin.
Among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Kris Neville's "Cold War" (short story, cold war): US military superiority is a double edged sword...

US is the only country with space stations - 9 of them. Only, they aren't the kind we understand by space station today. They're military bases, always ready to attack by nuclear weapons any point on the earth. In fact, they did attack a Russian rocket when Russians tried getting to space.

But US president is facing a dilemma. While this gives US enormous power in world affairs, the military men manning the stations are going literally mad one after another; stress of the job, so much power at their fingertips, is throwing them bonkers. What should the president do?

Collected in.

1. John W Campbell, Jr (ed)'s "The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, October 1969.
Rating: B.
Among the stories edited by John Campbell for Astounding/Analog.
Related: Stories of  Kris Neville.

Irving W Lande's "Slingshot" (short story, cold war, free): Description of fighter-plane combat equivalent in near-earth space

It's a US/USSR cold war story where there are military bases in space stations around earth. Story is mostly a description of a single "dogfight" between two fighter spaceships, with the US both the good side & the winner.

Near the end of the story, an idea is thrown around - idea of an air-to-air automatic target-locking missile that sounded as if it was from before there were such missiles. Title apparently refers to that. But no missiles are actually used in the story; only manually operated guns mounted on the sides of spaceships.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, November 1955.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks.
Rating: B.
Among the stories edited by John Campbell for Astounding/Analog.
Related: Cold war fiction.

Walter M Miller, Jr's "Check and Checkmate" (novelette, diplomacy, free): An unusual weapon for diplomatic haggling & espionage

Much of it sounds like Indo-Pak "talks" we constantly seem to have! If individuals were doing it rather than countries, we would have called them neurotic.

Story summary.

This is a cold war story - US vs Soviet Union. Only both are replaced by complicated alternate tags: "Western Federation of Autonomous States" & "Asian Proletarian League", respectively.

After a 4 decade of isolation, the two have now opened a communications channel - their Presidents have began talking to each other. Over the course of the story, one will learn, too late, that the other has an unusual weapon that gives its side TOTAL advantage over the other...

Fact sheet.

First published: If, January 1953.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Walter M Miller.

Murray Leinster's "The Invaders" (novella, first contact, free): What could aliens technologically only a few centuries ahead of us want from us?

Coburn accidentally discovered aliens masquerading as humans in remote Greece. He'll convince officialdom of their existance. Whole NATO military gets out after them. But the aliens are behaving in a very peculiar, friendly, manner...

Notes.

1. This is a cold war story, from US side. A lot of descriptions are clearly very biased.

Fact sheet.

First published: Amazing Stories, April-May 1953.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster, from 1950s.

Murray Leinster's "The Machine That Saved The World" (novelette, free): Human descendants from future want to help us!

Year 2180 wants to discuss (via a temporal broadcast) a doom about to visit 1972: a widespread & currently harmless germ is about to mutate into something fatal. They have a plan to contain the disaster, but need two way communications to thrash out details. Hence they send out design of transmitter Now should build to talk to Future.

But one man is smelling something fishy. With the help of electronic geniuses, he will transform the received designs into functionally equivalent but visually unrecognizable alternates. And convince the Future to build this first.

Results turn out to be very interesting.

Fact sheet.

First published: Amazing Stories, December 1957.
Rating: B.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, or Feedbooks.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Mack Reynolds' "Subversive" (short story, economy, free): A case against white collar jobs!

Later parts are basically Cold War propaganda on US' behalf, but I found the rest of it a good read.

Story summary.

Freer Enterprises is a recently setup direct sales company that threatens to bring down prices of consumer goods to a fraction of those currently prevailing - by cutting out all sorts of intermediaries & fancy packaging.

This has a shady group alarmed...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, December 1962.
Rating: A.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, or Feedbooks.
Listed among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: Stories of Mack Reynolds.

Arthur Clarke's "Death and the Senator" (short story, space hospitals, free): Certain heart ailments may be best treated in a zero gravity environment

This is a bit unusual among Clarke's stories in that a lot of text goes into human relationships that don't have anything to do with science fictional aspects of the story.

Story summary.

When Martin Steelman, long-term US senator & likely candidate for next presidential elections in 1976, learned he was suffering from a fatal heart disease & had only months to live, he finally began paying attention to his family - daughter's family including grandchildren, & estranged wife. And began preparing for the end.

When the news got out, he was approached by Dr Harkness, Technical Director of NASA. Soviets apparently have a small treatment facility up in orbit as part of research laboratory called Mechnikov Station, & probably magic can happen when his heart doesn't have to work against earth's gravity during treatment. Russians are also willing to help.

Turns out, it was primarily opposition from Steelman as a member of US Senate Committee on Astronautics that had killed NASA's efforts at setting up an Astrobiology Lab in space that might have given US a similar capability. Part out of guilt, & part out of altruism, senator will refuse treatment & die quietly.

Collected in.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke".
   
2. Arthur Clarke's "More Than One Universe" (collection).
3. Arthur Clarke's "Tales of Ten Worlds" (collection).

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, May 1961.
Rating: A.
Read online at wowio (no free download). Note their interface requires more than a half dozen clicks before the story text shows up.
Listed among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: Arthur Clarke's short stories, novels, collections, best of.

James Blish's "One-Shot" (short story, Cold War, free): A good gambler's gut feeling can have other uses too!

In many ways, it's a typical Blish story - good start, interesting middle that builds up anticipation, & then a somewhat dull ending. Some of his stories have cool concepts too, but this is not among them.

Story summary.

"Polish freighter Ludmilla" has dropped something into the waters after entering the New York City harbor. Those on-board the ship, including crew, had no knowledge of it; it was done completely automatically by someone who had rigged the ship. Communists are hinted at as culprits.

Colonel Harry Anderton, the Harbor Defense chief, has a problem at hand. He must know what was dropped - it may be a bomb, or something harmless. But waters here are full of junk, & he may not have enough time.

So he signs on the team of Dr Andy Harris at CIA ("Civilian Intelligence Associates"!). Harris will, in turn, enlist the services of a well known & very successful professional gambler - 'Abner Longmans ("One-Shot") Braun'.

While Harris' team of Dr Joan Hadamard & Clark Cheyney is on the job of remotely working with crew at site to locate the "egg", time is really running out. So Harris has appealed to Braun's _hunch_! Is the object a bomb or not? Braun is supposed to crystal graze!

It was interesting till this point. I was hoping something interesting will come out. There was a twist - but it was a dud.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Science Fiction, August 1955.
Rating: B
Download full text from Project Gutenberg/Manybooks/Feedbooks/Munseys.
Listed among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: All stories about US/USSR Cold War.

Mack Reynolds' "Summit" (short story, Cold War, free)

While it's neither as enlightening nor humorous as promised by great opening, it made a light reading & is rather short.

Story summary.

Meat of the story is the conversation between two military bosses - of US & USSR. Neither side is explicitly named, but the sides involved are obvious. The two meet during a summit get together of the two sides.

It's mostly about how the vested interests on both sides guarantee an environment of war, & won't let peace happen.

Science fictional element is provided by an unnecessary extension at end that says Mars & venus are each occupied by US/USSR, & that earth was destroyed in bombings sometime past. Story could very well have stood without this extension & science fictionalization.

Quotes.

Story offers some interesting quotes:

1. "Almost anything, if it goes on long enough, can be reduced to, first a Routine, and then, to a Tradition. And at the point it is, obviously, Necessary."
2. "I was raised in a family that believed in God. Just as, I suppose, you were raised in one that didn't. Neither of us seems to be particularly brilliant in establishing a position of our own."
3. "Have you ever noticed how it is that the nonconformists in any society are usually crackpots?"
4. "Defense materials. I wonder if ever in the history of the human race anyone ever admitted to producing offense materials."

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Science Fiction, February 1960.
Author's real name: Dallas McCord Reynolds.
Rating: B
Download full text from Project Gutenberg.
Listed among the stories from Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: All stories about US/USSR Cold War.

Kim Stanley Robinson's "A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations" (novelette, non-genre, free): The worst that is human

I should have disliked a story on this depressing a subject - wars of twentieth century, but it's gripping. May be I'll now have courage to pick up Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five".

Second half is a travelogue - an American on a drive in north England. This part is OK, but the meat is in the first half.

During the closing years of twentieth century, Frank Churchill - an author - is hired by a publisher to do a history of the century. This story is mostly about author's researches on some wars, & occasionally acts of terrorism, during the century. Horrific numbers, & some perspective. I've no idea of accuracy of data, but it did sound plausible.

One of the very few stories dealing with the horrors of war that I've actually liked.

Quotes.

1. "common citizen at home, ecstatic in the streets at the outbreak of general war? That seemed more likely to be just another manifestation of the hatred of the other. All my problems are your fault! He and Andrea had said that to each other a lot."
2. "Perhaps it was a simple pleasure in destruction. What is the primal response to an edifice? Knock it down. What is the primal response to a stranger? Attack him."
3. 'on the Somme the British put a gun every twenty yards along a fourteen-mile front, and fired a million and a half shells. In April 1917 the French fired six million shells... Verdun was a "battle" that lasted ten months, and killed almost a million men.'
4. 'The British section of the front was ninety miles long. Every day of the war, about seven thousand men along that front were killed or wounded - not in any battle in particular, but just as the result of incidental sniper fire or bombardment. It was called "wastage."
   ...
   at the end of every month or two of the Great War, the British had had a whole Vietnam Memorial's worth of dead. Every month or two, for fifty-one months.'
5. "in a world where people still held the notion that in war armies fought armies and soldiers killed soldiers, while civilians suffered privation and perhaps got killed accidentally, but were never deliberately targeted.
   ...
   In 1939, this changed.
   ...
   Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in that sense a kind of exclamation point, at the end of a sentence which the war had been saying all along: we will kill your families at home. War is war, as Sherman said; if you want peace, surrender.
   ...
   Nagasaki was bombed three days after Hiroshima, before the Japanese had time to understand the damage and respond... Truman and his advisors did it ... to ... show Stalin that they would use the bomb even as a threat or warning only, as Nagasaki demonstrated. A Vietnam Memorial's worth of civilians in an instantaneous flash, just so Stalin would take Truman seriously."
6. "designers of the death camps, the architects, engineers, builders. Were these functionaries less or more obscene than the mad doctors, the sadistic guards?"
7. "At first 1989 had looked like a break away from that. But now, just seven years later, the Cold War losers all looked like Germany in 1922, their money worthless, their shelves empty".
8. 'Japanese concentration camps in Manchuria had killed as many Chinese as the Germans had killed Jews. These deaths included thousands in the style of Mengele and the Nazi doctors, caused by "scientific" medical torture.'
9. "motivations would be stronger than ever; with populations rising and resources depleted, people were going to be fighting not to rule, but to survive. Some little country threatened with defeat could unleash an epidemic against its rival and accidentally kill off a continent, or everyone, it was entirely possible. The twenty-first century might make the twentieth look like nothing at all."

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's Science Fiction, April 1991.
Rating: A
Download full text (via Free SF Reader).

Arthur C. Clarke's "I Remember Babylon": Cold war propaganda mongers get a new medium

I didn't like this story primarily because the tone & the opening paragraph sound like Clarke supports the idea of a governmental moral police - state officials telling the citizens what is good for them rather than people deciding for themselves. And as if there is something wrong with the so called baser human tastes - apart from guilt imposed by morality brigade through years of brainwashing!

Moral police is a very touchy issue in India.

Story summary.

Story is narrated by Clarke himself, in the form of a fictitious encounter with Gene Harford, an Americal helping Soviets, at a Soviet Embassy reception in Colombo, Lanka.

Diplomat thanks Clarke for his idea of geostationary communication satellites, & how USSR is planning to use it for propaganda purposes against the US.

Idea is to throw up a satellite into geosynchronous orbit "due south of New Orleans ... way out in the open Pacific; it won't be over anyone's territory, so there'll be no political complications on that score... in full view of everybody from Seattle to Key West... the only TV station the whole of United States can tune in to! Yes, even Hawaii! There won't be any way of jamming it... The FCC can't even protest to a country that doesn't exist in the eyes of the State Department."

Note that no special dish or tuning device will be required by consumers! Its signals will be the equivalent of terrestrial TV!

And US cannot immediately counter because "United States is years behind in pay-load capacity".

To entice US consumers, they have plans of programs appealing to baser human tastes - of the kind that are now common place. With subtle propaganda sprinkled in. "For the first time in history, any form of censorship's become utterly impossible. There is simply no way of enforcing it; the consumer can get what he wants, right in his own home... we've absolutely no taboos. If you can film it, we can telecast it."

If this content renaissance sounds dated, I suppose it wasn't so when the story was published - long before I was born.

Story ends with a hint that is supposed to provide a clue to how title links up with the plot, but it went over my head: "into my heart blows a cold wind from the past; for I remember Babylon".

Collected in.

1. "Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
2. "More Than One Universe"
3. "Tales of Ten Worlds"

Fact sheet.

"I Remember Babylon", short story, review
First published: Playboy, March 1960.
Rating: C
Note: Ted Chiang's "Tower of Babylon" is a completely unrelated story.

Eric Frank Russell's "Mindwarpers" aka "With a Strange Device" (novel): Cold War spy thriller

This is not quite a typical Russell - at least when compared to his other stories I have read.

It has a somewhat tedious beginning; I actually used to avoid picking it up - though when in hand, it was easy enough to read. Story really picks up about half way through, & the rest is unputdownable. But even the later half is not very original - at least not now. You must have read innumerable spy stories of the ilk.

This story also has a lot in common with Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged": men of brains keep retiring or vanishing, making authorities nervous. There is a man named Reardon. The hero of the story is a metallurgist. Though the government is good here, unlike in Rand's. Note that Rand's book came a decade before Russell's.

Story summary.
I don't recall the countries named, but it's obvious the story is US vs USSR. And especially near end, it is obvious that US is good & USSR is bad!

Story begins in a US government weapons research facility. Russell must be a prophet - for I see some of the most annoying parts of this establishment in some modern software companies in Bangalore: color coded interiors (though they don't convey status or access control hierarchy in software companies); heavily segmented interiors with strict access barriers for employees (in software companies, barriors usually are to meet intellectual property protection needs when the same company services multiple clients - but they always tend to annoy employees).

Anyway, one fine day, an otherwise stable employee quits for no reason. He has no alternate job, & doesn't have a plan. He refuses to give any reasons.

Soon, there is a flood. From this facility, as well as many others across the country. Usually, the quitters are highly skilled & emotionally stable specialists. Some simply fail to turn up, others formally quit. Most soon leave the country; some start a new life in isolated small towns doing inconspicuous things like running a hardware store or tending to land.

Government is worried, & is convinced their is a plan behind this: "there are two ways of weakening the enemy. You can acquire his brains for your own use or, if that proves impossible, you can deprive him of the use of them."

That is when Richard Bransome, a metallurgist at the facility, with a wife & kids, begins to behave oddly. Government puts an agent on his tail - one Joseph Reardon, of Military Intelligence.

Richard has been having nightmares. After overhearing a conversation of two men in a coffee shop, he remembers a crime he committed 2 decades ago; he had ruthlessly killed a woman named Arline Lafarge in a tiny town called Burleston - though he will recall the details over a period of time. The overheard conversation conveyed a piece of gossip that the bones of the woman had been accidentally discovered recently at the place Richard had buried her.

Richard has a feeling he will soon be arrested as investigation proceeds. Other odd events have been happening around him - like a man who looks like plainclothes cop tailing him.

Eventually, he cannot take it anymore. Gives a story to office, another at home, & vanishes. Only, Reardon is still on his tail.

He spends a while in Burleston trying to discretely dig the level of police investigation. Over a large part of the story, he will discover that there was no murder, nor any bones discovered. He has been chasing ghosts of his own mind.

Anger makes him go for some amateur sleuthing - to discover the culprits who planted the ghosts in his mind. He will eventually lead the tailing Reardon to enemy spy ring & their ingenious weapon - a hypnosis machine that can plant chosen memories in the brain of a doped man. Turns out, Burleston was kidnapped, drugged, & given the treatment in a way he could discover only much later - even now, he has his memory blank for some 2 hours on a particular day.

Fact sheet.
"With a Strange Device" aka "Mindwarpers", novel, review
First published: 1965
Rating: A
Related: All stories of Eric Frank Russell.