The Best SF Stories from New Worlds, volume 1, edited by Michael Moorcock. 1967.
In the 1960s, New Worlds, a British sf magazine, was ground zero for sf’s New Wave. This first collection of stories from there is pretty much a microcosm of it. Get comfortable, there will be quotes.
“The Small Betraying Detail”, by Brian Aldiss.
Suppose, I thought, there was truth in Walter's absurd hypothesis about there being other, similar phases in the total universe, or however he expressed it? Then might there not exist an earth on which man was as he is now— yet totally alien, man without aquatic ancestry, man with no love of the sea, man with hair . . . man looking like the shaggy thing at which I now stared ... a creature similar to me, but yet ineluctably different, irreconcilably different, hostile even ... a hunting creature, shuffling backwards from its burrow before it turned on me. . . . But the pit was heaving, the bands of flint seemed to rotate, the shaggy beast was already swinging towards me. I saw its face as it came at me—and then a darkness where no candle could burn swirled in and submerged me.
Suppose the aquatic ape hypothesis were true…and that we crossed paths with a humanity that never had such an episode? Complications ensue, you betcha.
“The Keys to December”, by Roger Zelazny. Early Zelazny was always something else.
When his parents had presented themselves at the Public Health Planned Parenthood Centre and requested advice and medication pending offspring, they had been informed as to the available worlds and the bodyform requirements for them. They had selected Alyonal, which had recently been purchased by General Mining for purposes of mineral exploitation. Wisely, they had elected the option; that is to say, they had signed a contract on behalf of their anticipated offspring, who would be eminently qualified to inhabit that world, agreeing that he would work as an employee of General Mining until he achieved his majority, at which time he would be free to depart and seek employment wherever he might choose (though his choices would admittedly be limited). In return for this guarantee, General Mining agreed to assure his health, education and continuing welfare for so long as he remained in their employ.
When Alyonal caught fire and went away, those Coldworld Catforms covered by the option who were scattered about the crowded galaxy were, by virtue of the agreement, wards of General Mining.
And this is why there’s a population of cat people looking for a world they can freeze and make their own, and what comes of it.
“The Assassination Device”, by J.G. Ballard
THORACIC DROP. The spinal landscape, revealed at the level of T-12, is that of the porous rock-towers of Teneriffe, and of the native of the Canaries, Oscar Domínguez, who created the technique of decalcomania and so exposed the first spinal landscape. The clinker-like rock-towers, suspended above the silent swamp, create an impression of profound anguish. The inhospitability of this mineral world, with its inorganic growths, is relieved only by the balloons flying in the clear sky. They are painted with names: Jackie, Lee Harvey, Malcolm. In the mirror of this swamp there are no reflections. Here, time makes no concessions.
There is a story in the dozen pages like this, but it takes work to dig it out. This must be somewhere very close to the frontier where personal idiolect becomes so personal that communication ceases. But sometimes I’m really up for it - at its very best, the style gives up insights into other idiolects and the personal uses of shared symbols.
“Nobody Axed You”, by John Brunner
In a world of perpetual population crisis,!what’s a sensible, patriotic TV network to do? Why, shows airing copycat-able murders, of course. This is by far the most satirical piece in the book, and probably the most Sixties thing here.
I went on commentating on the show, explaining how the dialogue was checked with word- and phrase-frequency lists published by a reliable research outfit, so I could be absolutely sure the same dialogue, word for word, might occur in daily life; how the settings were checked for authenticity by social workers; how the weapon selected— as always in these shows—was a common one, readily purchasable; how the killer, myself, was shown marking himself beyond doubt as he did the job, so that anyone could see him and turn him in to the law, thus ensuring that not only the victim but also the killer contributed to diminishing the total population.
“A Two-Timer”, by David I. Masson. By my taste, by a wide margin the finest story of the book,‘and I’d never even heard of it before. Masson was a strident of English literature, and published several pieces on the effects of changing pronunciation on poetic structures this is an excruciatingly correct rendering of the experiences of a time traveler from 1683 in the future year 1964.
While she was gone, he said, he wou'd shew me round the House, but all he did, was to bring me up the Stairs to a Closet or Privy, which he told me, was wash'd by Water, that I shou'd pour on, by pressing on a kind of Handle. Next by it was a Chamber for Washing your Person, that had a Bason, with two Taps, from which Water came. One brought forth Water very hot, that I was like to have Scalded my self, if I had not seen the Steam rising from it. By this Bason was a great Trough with two other Taps, and a Dish full of Holes in the Ceiling above it.
“The Music Makers”, by Langdon Jones. Ones was assistant editor of New Worlds under Moorcock, and also a musician and composer.
The dunes curved about them, sloping and pallid in the eerie fight; the steps of the men crunched into the soft sand. The urge came again, just like the end of the Berg; a desire for an unknown fulfilment that bloomed within him. It was a desire that could never be expressed in words; the price of his music. A perpetual irritation, it had been with him for most of his life. Music was just not enough. Sometimes, when he listened to the climax of a Bach fugue, he felt that he was approaching something—something big and incomprehensible. But he never attained it. He was like a drowning man, clasping the weeds at the side of a river, pulling himself half from the water and then slipping back again. He wondered what would happen if he ever found what he was looking for. The colour of the dune shadows had deepened again, and glowed an almost luminous blue. Everything was still, and the vastness about the two men forced itself upon their attention. Here and there, a sand crystal caught the light from a star, and the dunes were sparkled with silver. He remembered again the people in the concert hall.
"If I were a Martian," he said, "I think I would kill us."
“The Squirrel Cage”, by Thomas Disch. Yup, you can always count on Disch for a fascinating tour through misery.
I have no memory of any time before this, and I cannot say how long this has been going on. According to today's New York Times it is the Second of May, 1961. I don't know what conclusion one is to draw from that.
From what I've been able to gather, reading The Times, my position here in this room is not typical. Prisons, for instance, seem to be run along more liberal lines, usually. But perhaps The Times is lying, covering up. Perhaps even the date has been falsified. Perhaps the entire paper, every day, is an elaborate forgery and this is actually 1950, not 1961. Or maybe they are antiques and I am living whole centuries after they were printed, a fossil. Anything seems possible. I have no way to judge.
Sometimes I make up little stories while I sit here on my stool in front of the typewriter. Sometimes they are stories about the people in The New York Times, and those are the best stories. Sometimes they are just about people I make up, but those aren't so good because. . . .
They're not so good because I think everybody is dead. I think I may be the only one left, sole survivor of the breed. And they just keep me here, the last one, alive, in this room, this cage, to look at, to observe, to make their observations of, to—I don't know why they keep me alive.
So. None of these stories was a waste of time for someone interested in the history of sf, one was a luminous delight, and none were worse than okay. That’s not bad for a used book that’s sat on my shelf since about 1990.
