A monk is sent by a group of scientists to another planet of bird people. He integrates into their society and proceeds to teach them to be civilised.

It’s not often I’m actually offended by a story, but then it’s not often I read stories that are written with so obvious an agenda. For example I avoid CS Lewis because I know what his agenda is, and I’m constantly distracted by the thought that I’m being told a parable as a way of convincing me how ace Christianity is. But at least CS Lewis wrote interesting stories, this novelette by Philip José Farmer does not even have that going for it. Don’t believe it could really be that bad, imagine 45 pages of this:

He must of dozed away, for he suddenly awakened as he felt a small body snuggling next to his. It was his favorite, Tutu.

‘Me cold,’ she said. ‘Also, many times, before the village burn, me sleep in your arms. Why you no ask me to do so tonight.’

[I should explain that even though the Tutu clearly understand the concept of past tense, the author cannot allow her character to actually speak in it. Why? Indeed.]

Her shoulders shook and her beak racked across his chest as she pressed the side of her face against him. And not for the first time, Carmondy regretted that these creatures had hard beaks. They would never know the pleasure of soft lips meeting in a kiss.

If that sounds like the kind of story you’d love to read let me point out that the “plot” underlying that prose is essentially 44 pages of an unintentionally comical human character leading a group of savages from one place to another. Along the way, we are asked to believe, he is able, over the course of 1 year, to teach a species of non-verbal creatures to speak English, with the caveat that they are confined to the sort of pidgin English spoken by many black butler and red indian characters found in Hollywood films from the 40s: “Me love you. Tutu want go with you.”

Why would any author think that was a reasonable way to treat readers? In what insane haze did that seem interesting to any editor? Well, that’s just the problem, it doesn’t have to be interesting, because it’s actually a retelling of The Exodus from Egypt, and Carmondy’s character is just waiting to give the savages the one gift they really need to finally be civilised: an irrational belief in an unseen God force that is watching over them. Cause, you know, societies that have a strong belief if religion are all peaceful and happy.

The makers of a supercomputer are approached by a monk who has an unusual proposition: his sect wishes to hire the computer to generate and print every possible name of God.

I love the combination of religion and scifi, both are an insight into the peculiar human condition. Clarke plays this story beautifully, balancing on the edge that divides science and superstition. A nice read.

A businessman has learned to use a kind of time travel to build a wealthy lifestyle for himself. But things begin to go wrong when he falls in love with a woman who also has special powers.

This is an interesting take on time travel. It’s based on the idea of a person who can regularly communicate with himself 48 hours in the future, and 48 hours in the past. There are some obvious exploits such a person could get up to in the financial markets. Yet Silverberg manages to add an interesting twist to this scifi standard: the main character develops an emotional dependence on his future and past selves, or (now+n) and (now-n) as he calls them. Of course every 2 days he changes places to become (now+n), and then must act out the other side of the same conversation he had with himself 2 days earlier.

The dependence he has on his alter selves is thrown into danger when he meets and falls in love with a woman who has the apparent ability to suppress his time travelling communications. She is in fact suppressing her own time travelling abilities, this time physical, and which she can’t control without this suppressive field.

Some stories are built on characters or situation, this however is one based entirely on an idea. It’s an interesting idea but there are a few problems with the story: firstly the author feels the need to fully explain what the idea is (communication across time) and this becomes tiresome eventually — okay I get it already! Secondly the idea itself becomes a distraction. Rather than feeling any sympathy or attachment to the main character I kept trying to work out if it was in fact logically possible to maintain this form of communication with each version of himself having to communicate simultaneously with both his future and past selves. In the story they take turns, but surely then each subsequent self down the line would also then have to wait their turn, causing the whole chain to get far out of sync. Uh, anyway, it does make you think, and that’s certainly worth something right?

A couple meet a very engaging man who invites them to dinner and entertains them with endless stories of his successes and adventures. In the end he reveals one singly unexpected detail.

This is a small story based around a gimmick ending. It’s probably never a good idea to base a story on a gimmick, and unfortunately Bradbury proves that with this tale. I suppose that 50 years ago, when this story was first published, it would have been startling and shocking to read Bradbury’s ending, but to the jaded reader of today it’s hardly even worth a raised eyebrow. I found myself wondering what the point of this story was.

Two sisters prepare for an imminent gentlemen caller; one woman is in love, the other is dubious.

Bradbury often writes in a romantic, almost poetic way about intimate, personal experiences. This story is a good example of that: having almost no action whatsoever, it is entirely about the relationships between three people, and the power our emotions have over us. Not much to comment on, other than the style of prose which is, in typical fashion, masterful.

A man happens across a woman who, many years before, had been a member of the same rebellious group of young resistance fighters as he. He has fond memories of how vibrant and full of life she was but now, as they become reacquainted, he realises that something has worn away, that she has lost some edge that once made her so attractive to him.

The author uses the landscape of the story itself to describe the narrator’s feelings, as he wanders among the derelict buildings of a town that was once bustling. This is a sweetly melancholy story that will feel true for any reader that has ever tried to return to a childhood place only to find that things are no longer as you remembered them. As O’Faolain puts it: “You cannot have your memories and eat them.”

Far in the future, alien visitors arrive to find all animal life on Earth long dead. These Ganae scouts investigate what caused such mass extinction in order to determine if there is any danger to their own plans to colonise Earth. They have a particularly useful tool to help them: a resurrection device that can restore an entire human, with memories intact, from any piece of bodily residue. They start with an ancient Egyptian, restored from a museum mummy. Eventually they restore a super-human from our future, the “monster” from the story’s title.

This is a puzzle story with a twist, the main characters are tentacled invaders who are struggling to deal with a single, resurrected human being. The resolution depends on how that single human will manage to replenish the entire human species, given that he is alone and surrounded by an advance party of aggressive and technologically sophisticated aliens. This was a so-so story that was an easy read, but was told in a slightly dry fashion. I liked the setup but the end felt flat when everything suddenly fell into place a bit too conveniently.

A man becomes enthralled by what appears to be an extremely lifelike mannequin he stumbles across in an antique shop. The man purchases the mannequin, an elegant looking woman, and it becomes like a silent companion to him in his home. Eventually he falls in love and thinks of it as his wife. This perfect relationship becomes a little too real by the ending of this story.

I admit that this is a clever and well-written story, but unfortunately it isn’t terribly interesting. It may have seemed more shocking when it was first published in 1975, but after watching a recent documentary on Channel 5, about men who live with doll companions, I see this subject as fairly mundane now. This is emphasised by the coy manner that Ballard writes in—not once mentioning the most obvious activity a man in Lothario’s position would get up to. Absent the shock value, there was nothing left except for an ironic ending, and that was easy to see coming.

If you’re visiting family this holiday, you might find this story to be very appropriate. It’s set in a future where no one visits anyone, not ever. Not even if they are married. Not even if they have children. All humans are separated immediately upon birth, and from then on all interaction happens via television screens.

Ballard published this story in 1977 (in Ambit) so he could have no idea that something called the World Wide Web would eventually give credence to his story’s premise; his characters use television cameras to communicate with their surrounding world. However, if you imagine YouTube, chat rooms and virtualised worlds in the television’s place, the fiction becomes much more realistic. Like modern day Web users, Ballard’s characters feel safe behind their invented personas: everyone is always 22 years old and attractive thanks to thick layers of television makeup.

There are difficulties to this life too, getting examined by a doctor, or using the services of a masseuse can be tricky, but Ballard explains this quite nicely, his two main characters happen to be a doctor and a masseuse. The destabilising event that initiates the plot of this story is the decision by these two characters to meet up, in person. Ballard obviously has a very cynical view of human nature as this meeting is utterly catastrophic. In fact the title of the story is a comical play on this words with a nod towards this disaster: the family being described as a unit of intense care, and the outcome of their meeting almost certainly requiring the services of a hospital’s intensive care unit.

Is this story unapologetically cynical, dark and condemning of the modern condition? Oh yes, and the author is even wry about it. A fantastic combination, and a great story.