So, as part of Astounding/Analog’s 90th anniversary, I’m going to be reading through The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology over the few months.  I’ll read one or two stories, and post on them here, mostly in order.

Edited by John W. Campbell, Jr., the anthology was first published in 1952 by Simon and Schuster.  For more on the backstory behind the anthology, see this excellent post at Black Gate.  The stories are presented in the book roughly in the order of publication, beginning with Heilein’s “Blowups Happen” from 1940 and ending with “Protected Species” by H. B. Fyfe, which was published in 1951. The complete table of contents is listed in the picture below. Click to enlarge.

The book begins with an introduction by Campbell, where he discusses how science fiction is a new form of literature. It’s something of a rambling essay. Campbell talks about science fiction still being in its adolescence, having left its childhood behind  but not yet at maturity. In other words, science fiction is leaving the nasty pulps behind and is becoming respectable literature.

I have mixed feelings about this attitude. While I want my fiction to be well-written and literate, I don’t want to be bored by it. I like a good, pulpy adventure story.

So what stories does Campbell present as evidence of a maturing field of literature?

The first selection is “Blowups Happen”, one of Robert Heinlein’s early stories in his future history. It concerns a group of men working in a nuclear power plant and the pressures they face. The story was already dated by the time it was reprinted in this book. There’s a footnote on the first page of the story in which Campbell says that the stories would be reprinted as they appeared in the magazine and not in any later versions. It was published originally in the September 1940 issue.

I first read this story in high school, I think in The Past Through Tomorrow.  Other than the famous first line (“Put down that wrench!”), I didn’t remember much about it. Maybe it was because I tried to read it just before going to bed over a couple of nights, but “Blowups Happen” didn’t do a lot for me this time around. There was a lot of talk about how men handle pressure and what causes them to crack up.

It wasn’t a bad story. It just didn’t have a lot of action.

Much more enjoyable was Jack Williamson’s “Hindsight”, which was published in the May 1940 issue. For some reason, it wasn’t included in Ballantine’s The Best of Jack Williamson. I read it in Isaac Asimov Presents the Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 2: 1940.  I read it in high school as well, and like “Blowups Happen”, I hadn’t read it since. (Yes, I read a great deal of vintage science fiction in high school. It was readily available then.)

“Hindsight” has stood the test of time better than “Blowups Happen”. At least I think so. YMMV. I’ll not spoil the twist at the end. Just know that an Earthman walked away from two of his friends twenty years earlier to work for a notorious space pirate. The situation was something of a lovers’ triangle, with the protagonist coming out on the losing end.

Now, thanks to the scientific genius of the protagonist, the space pirate is ready to declare open war on Earth. Earth’s forces are led by the friends he left behind twenty years before.

I think you can see the dilemma. There’s definitely some pseudo-scientific technobabble in play which makes the resolution of the story rise above your average, predictable space opera of the time. This one is worth reading.

So that’s my take on the first two stories in The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology.  Not great, but not bad. I’ve read almost all of the stories in this book, although a few have escape my reading to this point.  My tastes have changed somewhat over the years, but not that much.  Some of the stories I’ve read multiple times over the years.  Others, like the ones considered today, I’ve only read once. It will be interesting to see how all the stories have stood up to the march of time.

Stay tuned for further posts.