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A revival of the 1929-55 pulp magazine as a quarterly series of trade-paperback anthologies, this volume brings solid entertainment and traditional storytelling back to short science fiction.
Volume 1 of Thrilling Wonder Stories first came to my attention back in the spring of 2008, when I was visiting the Center for the Study of Science Fiction in Lawrence, Kansas. You can see why-- a pulp style cover (modeled after an 1952 Planet Stories cover)... but on a modern book! A quick examination showed that the whole book had been created with this modus operandi: new and old mixed. It contained classic stories and new stories in the classic style, along with a variety of other features reminiscent of the science fiction magazines of old, such as "scientifacts", interviews, reviews, and even a letter column. (It was apparently there because James Gunn, director of the CSSF, had written a retrospective about space opera for the book.) I mentally filed it away for later purchase, but I never did get around to buying it; I never even jotted it down on my books-to-buy list! But the series crossed my way again in the spring of 2009, when Star Trek novelist David R. George III began promoting Volume 2 on the TrekBBS, as he was featured within. Both books were offered for sale on Thrilling Wonder's website for a fabulous discount, so I snapped them both up and resolved to read them this summer. The contents of the books are pretty jumbled up, but for both volumes I'll be tackling them in the order of new stories, classic stories, and other features.
The first newly written story in Volume 1 (and, indeed, the first story full stop) is "Tomb of the Tyrant Emperor" by Constance Cooper. I was initially worried, as we were in for what looked like a group of stereotypical cat-aliens with an elaborate caste system, but this turned out to be pretty well thought-out and not mere window-dressing. The aliens (who called themselves "the Free") even incorporate a number of belief systems, and this turns out to be relevant to the story and themes as well. The premise of the story-- a group of Free archaeologists venturing into the only known structure of the Tyrants, the race that once ruled their planet-- is a good one, and I really enjoyed the story. Some good ruminations on belief, and a good ending. On the other hand, "Three's a Crowd..." by Eric Brown is cliched starting with the title and never improves. There's an android, against whom our characters are prejudiced, who ends up putting herself in harm's way and proving her worth. And there's a hive-minded alien, who can be injured by injuring any one of its parts. But God knows why, because the creature's nature adds exactly nothing to the story being told. Kevin King's "Dark Side" tells of a classified and lost to history Apollo 19 mission, but my lack of emotional engagement with it destroyed any effectiveness the ending might have had, as did the character's seeming bizarre haste in making a very important decision. "Farthest Horizons" claims to be an original story, but the copyright information reveals that Geoffrey A. Landis's story originally appeared in an sf mag back in 1996. Whatever, I don't care, as it's a surprisingly involving story of a group of people who find a strange planet-like structure that appears to be the opposite end of a black hole. It has some overused tropes of sf, but it uses them well, and the characters are sharply drawn, turning this into the best "new" story of the book. "Enlightenment" by Michael Kandel, on the other hand, is one of the book's weaker offerings, about a man trying to wake up from his dream into a reality. It just never quite cohered for me, and the explanations didn't really fly. "Love Seat" by R. Neube sort of worked, but I'm uncertain why the object at the center of the story had to be a couch, other than to create the excellent title. Finally, Ben Bova's two-page "Jovian Dreams" didn't really do anything interesting.
Following some snippets of stories by Jack Williamson (where he very nearly, but doesn't, coin the terms "black hole" and "wormhole"), we get the first classic sf story of the volume, "The Moon Era". A young schoolteacher explores the prehistoric moon, and he encounters some absolutely fabulously-described creatures. I really enjoyed Williamson's imaginatively described balloon monsters, the Mother, and the Eternal Ones. Unfortunately, Williamson is unable to devise a plot to match; most of what we get is the teacher hitting things with a pole, which results in the story becoming somewhat tedious after a while, especially due to its novella length. Isaac Asimov's "The Portable Star" is a story that io9 once claimed was one of Asimov's uncollected stories, but that's not true, because here it is. Aside from the alleged risque section (which isn't really risque at all), I can't see why; it's not very good, but it's not very bad, either. A typical sf story from the Good Doctor: a neat idea presented in the form of a puzzle that has to be solved by thinly characterized protagonists. Probably the best classic story of the volume was "The Irritated People" by Ray Bradbury, which depicts a very amusing ending to a far-future Cold War. Some good twists and some good black humor. Good fun all around. Also quite good was "Salvage", a story by Cleve Cartmill about the crew of a salvage spaceship that comes across the biggest haul of their careers-- while on a mission they can't miss. I really liked it, and I'm saddened that the vintage novel featuring the same characters (advertised at the story's end) never materialized. "The World of If" by Stanley G. Weinbaum was another excellent one, a very amusing take on alternative universes. I was amused that it predicted an economic collapse for 2010 (we'll see), but it's prediction of transoceanic flights being so long and boring that they simply had to lead to socialization with strangers certainly didn't transpire! On the other hand, once I realized that Raymond F. Jones's "The Alien Machine" was (in part) the basis for This Island Earth, the subject of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, I was entirely unable to take it seriously. ("Increase the Flash Gordon noise and put more science stuff around!")
The first feature is also the book's first piece in general, an editorial called "The Wonders of Wonder" by Winston Engle. This details what lead Engle to publishing the book in the first place, and also lays out his vision for it. Like a lot of pieces along these lines, it can come off a bit like a manifesto for what makes "good sf" even when Engle closes with a defensive statement that he does say other types can be good, too. But as someone who enjoys the odd thrilling wonder story himself from time to time, it's an enjoyable read. As far as defining sf goes, there's "What Science Fiction Means to Me: Tremendous Contribution to Civilization" by Jack Williamson, a 1929 piece that nicely and concisely lays out the appeal and potential of science fiction. I really liked his notion that it didn't matter if a spaceship had even been built or not, for science fiction had already imagined it and launched it. "Space Opera Revisited" by James E. Gunn gives us an overview of the sf genre; James Gunn generally knows what he's talking about (he wrote a six-volume history of sf, after all), and this volume is no exception. The "Scientifacts: Strange But True" section by James Trefil is interesting for its retro nature, but doesn't really offer anything too exciting or unknown. Did you know that a computer virus is a lot like a real virus!? Better along these lines is "Many World in Science and Science Fiction" by Joseph D. Miller, which explores the scientific theory behind alternate universes and suggests ways to incorporate it into sf, a fascinating (if occasionally incomprehensible) read. Winston Engle's interview with Forrest Ackerman, "4e-Membrance of Things Past" (a bit of a stretch for a pun, if you ask me) is an interesting glimpse into a bygone era of fandom. One of my favorite features of the book was "The Televisualizer", where Bill Warren reviewed a number of sf DVD releases in exacting detail; it's more interesting for his comments on these films and their importance and history, than the reviews himself, but that's just fine. The lettercol, featuring letters to the original Thrilling Wonder Stories from the 1930s by the likes of Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, is good fun. Not so much Winston Engle's poorly-written and worse-drawn comic strip, "Dr. Zotts".
As you can see, there's a lot in this book. The new stories are decent-- a couple good ones, a couple not-so-good ones-- but where the book really shines is the classic stories: six of them, and the worst is Asimov's decidedly average "The Portable Star". And the plethora of features is just icing on the cake. I haven't even mentioned the illustrations: there's at least one with every story, sometimes more. If it's a classic story, they come from the original publication; new stories have newly commissioned ones. The book as a whole is a delight and a resounding success. My biggest complaint is that one of my anthology pet peeves is when there are no author bios, and that is unfortunately present here, but this would be rectified in the second volume.
A revival of the 1929-55 pulp magazine as a quarterly series of trade-paperback anthologies, this volume brings solid entertainment and traditional storytelling back to short science fiction.
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The first newly written story in Volume 1 (and, indeed, the first story full stop) is "Tomb of the Tyrant Emperor" by Constance Cooper. I was initially worried, as we were in for what looked like a group of stereotypical cat-aliens with an elaborate caste system, but this turned out to be pretty well thought-out and not mere window-dressing. The aliens (who called themselves "the Free") even incorporate a number of belief systems, and this turns out to be relevant to the story and themes as well. The premise of the story-- a group of Free archaeologists venturing into the only known structure of the Tyrants, the race that once ruled their planet-- is a good one, and I really enjoyed the story. Some good ruminations on belief, and a good ending. On the other hand, "Three's a Crowd..." by Eric Brown is cliched starting with the title and never improves. There's an android, against whom our characters are prejudiced, who ends up putting herself in harm's way and proving her worth. And there's a hive-minded alien, who can be injured by injuring any one of its parts. But God knows why, because the creature's nature adds exactly nothing to the story being told. Kevin King's "Dark Side" tells of a classified and lost to history Apollo 19 mission, but my lack of emotional engagement with it destroyed any effectiveness the ending might have had, as did the character's seeming bizarre haste in making a very important decision. "Farthest Horizons" claims to be an original story, but the copyright information reveals that Geoffrey A. Landis's story originally appeared in an sf mag back in 1996. Whatever, I don't care, as it's a surprisingly involving story of a group of people who find a strange planet-like structure that appears to be the opposite end of a black hole. It has some overused tropes of sf, but it uses them well, and the characters are sharply drawn, turning this into the best "new" story of the book. "Enlightenment" by Michael Kandel, on the other hand, is one of the book's weaker offerings, about a man trying to wake up from his dream into a reality. It just never quite cohered for me, and the explanations didn't really fly. "Love Seat" by R. Neube sort of worked, but I'm uncertain why the object at the center of the story had to be a couch, other than to create the excellent title. Finally, Ben Bova's two-page "Jovian Dreams" didn't really do anything interesting.
Following some snippets of stories by Jack Williamson (where he very nearly, but doesn't, coin the terms "black hole" and "wormhole"), we get the first classic sf story of the volume, "The Moon Era". A young schoolteacher explores the prehistoric moon, and he encounters some absolutely fabulously-described creatures. I really enjoyed Williamson's imaginatively described balloon monsters, the Mother, and the Eternal Ones. Unfortunately, Williamson is unable to devise a plot to match; most of what we get is the teacher hitting things with a pole, which results in the story becoming somewhat tedious after a while, especially due to its novella length. Isaac Asimov's "The Portable Star" is a story that io9 once claimed was one of Asimov's uncollected stories, but that's not true, because here it is. Aside from the alleged risque section (which isn't really risque at all), I can't see why; it's not very good, but it's not very bad, either. A typical sf story from the Good Doctor: a neat idea presented in the form of a puzzle that has to be solved by thinly characterized protagonists. Probably the best classic story of the volume was "The Irritated People" by Ray Bradbury, which depicts a very amusing ending to a far-future Cold War. Some good twists and some good black humor. Good fun all around. Also quite good was "Salvage", a story by Cleve Cartmill about the crew of a salvage spaceship that comes across the biggest haul of their careers-- while on a mission they can't miss. I really liked it, and I'm saddened that the vintage novel featuring the same characters (advertised at the story's end) never materialized. "The World of If" by Stanley G. Weinbaum was another excellent one, a very amusing take on alternative universes. I was amused that it predicted an economic collapse for 2010 (we'll see), but it's prediction of transoceanic flights being so long and boring that they simply had to lead to socialization with strangers certainly didn't transpire! On the other hand, once I realized that Raymond F. Jones's "The Alien Machine" was (in part) the basis for This Island Earth, the subject of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, I was entirely unable to take it seriously. ("Increase the Flash Gordon noise and put more science stuff around!")
The first feature is also the book's first piece in general, an editorial called "The Wonders of Wonder" by Winston Engle. This details what lead Engle to publishing the book in the first place, and also lays out his vision for it. Like a lot of pieces along these lines, it can come off a bit like a manifesto for what makes "good sf" even when Engle closes with a defensive statement that he does say other types can be good, too. But as someone who enjoys the odd thrilling wonder story himself from time to time, it's an enjoyable read. As far as defining sf goes, there's "What Science Fiction Means to Me: Tremendous Contribution to Civilization" by Jack Williamson, a 1929 piece that nicely and concisely lays out the appeal and potential of science fiction. I really liked his notion that it didn't matter if a spaceship had even been built or not, for science fiction had already imagined it and launched it. "Space Opera Revisited" by James E. Gunn gives us an overview of the sf genre; James Gunn generally knows what he's talking about (he wrote a six-volume history of sf, after all), and this volume is no exception. The "Scientifacts: Strange But True" section by James Trefil is interesting for its retro nature, but doesn't really offer anything too exciting or unknown. Did you know that a computer virus is a lot like a real virus!? Better along these lines is "Many World in Science and Science Fiction" by Joseph D. Miller, which explores the scientific theory behind alternate universes and suggests ways to incorporate it into sf, a fascinating (if occasionally incomprehensible) read. Winston Engle's interview with Forrest Ackerman, "4e-Membrance of Things Past" (a bit of a stretch for a pun, if you ask me) is an interesting glimpse into a bygone era of fandom. One of my favorite features of the book was "The Televisualizer", where Bill Warren reviewed a number of sf DVD releases in exacting detail; it's more interesting for his comments on these films and their importance and history, than the reviews himself, but that's just fine. The lettercol, featuring letters to the original Thrilling Wonder Stories from the 1930s by the likes of Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, is good fun. Not so much Winston Engle's poorly-written and worse-drawn comic strip, "Dr. Zotts".
As you can see, there's a lot in this book. The new stories are decent-- a couple good ones, a couple not-so-good ones-- but where the book really shines is the classic stories: six of them, and the worst is Asimov's decidedly average "The Portable Star". And the plethora of features is just icing on the cake. I haven't even mentioned the illustrations: there's at least one with every story, sometimes more. If it's a classic story, they come from the original publication; new stories have newly commissioned ones. The book as a whole is a delight and a resounding success. My biggest complaint is that one of my anthology pet peeves is when there are no author bios, and that is unfortunately present here, but this would be rectified in the second volume.