Introduction to DOUBLE, DOUBLE, TOIL AND TROUBLE by Holley Cantine from Fantasy and Science Fiction

Between the purely imaginative and the solidly speculative, as between speculation and science, the boundaries can never be entirely resolved. Just now—when yesterday's impossibles are so often today's probabies and tomorrow's certainties—the once sharp dividing line between "scientific" and "supernatural" (or "reason" and "mysticism" or "science-fiction" and "fantasy") is especially hazy.

Hypnosis, for instance, is such a respectable adjunct of medicine today that it is difficult to recall how recently the words mesmerist and charlatan were almost synonymous. "Faith healing," of course, is still medically suspect—but "psychosomatic" is a vital part of every GP's new vocabulary. And while ultra-scientific pharamaceutical laboratories are rediscovering, renaming (and peddling) the curative agents in long-discredited witch-doctor drugs, a startling number of solid conservative public utilities are making use of "water witching" techniques for everyday chores.

It does seem about time to reopen the question (imaginative or speculative) of magic in general ...

Introduction to THE NEVER ENDING PENNY by Bernard Wolfe from Playboy

It is of interest to note that the calling card of the author of the preceding story reads: "Holley Cantine—Writer…Agitator ... Editor ... Publisher ... Printer ... Carpenter & Builder ...Brewer ... Trombone & Tuba (funerals a specialty)... rates on request." Further investigation by your editor has revealed that Mr. Cantine also lives in a house in the woods which he built himself—for himself, his wife and child.

Bernard Wolfe's approach to the Great Deception of the Carbon Copy lies clearly across the nebulous and shifting line that currently divides the possible from the distinctly improbable. His setting, treatment, and outcome all differ radically from Mr. Cantine's. I cannot vouch for Mr. Wolfe's experience with demons, imps, or well-dwellers in general, but his Mexican background should be authentic: his eminently readable biography of Leon Trotsky came out of the years he spent in Mexico as Trotsky's secretary. He is also the author of the memorable s-f novel, "Limbo."

Introduction to THE FELLOW WHO MARRIED THE MAXILL GIRL by Ward Moore from fantasy and Science Fiction

In just one year's time, the change in the climate of our thinking in a "breakthrough" area is staggering. A year ago (while the public-at-large was still goggling at the official use of the word "Astronaut," applied to the seven men selected for Project Mercury training), a select group of scientists embarked on a systematic search of space for radio signals indicating the existence of other intelligent life in the universe. They called their project, charmingly if self-consciously, "Ozma"; and Harvard's eminent Dr. Shapley (who was, you must understand, a guiding spirit in the venture) referred to it as "high-class science fiction." The astronomers could no more help believing what half a dozen converging lines of research had already indicated than they could stop feeling slightly silly about believing it.

Two days ago, as I write this, the country's most staid newspapers headlined stories of the discovery of lifelike hydrocarbons in a sliver of meteorite: "Evidence of Life Beyond Earth Reported Found," and "Wax a Clue to Life in Outer Space—Trees, Plants, Even Men May Be Behind Meteorites."

We—and the pronoun becomes daily more inclusive, less exclusive—have begun to believe we are really not alone in the world. With this awareness comes (as for the babe in the process of distinguishing self from others) the first acute sense of need for a working system of communication.

Introduction to SOMETHING INVENTED ME by R. C. Phelan from The Reporter

1960 was the year for breakthroughs and breakdowns in communications. The most dramatic to my mind (after "Ozma") was the device called the "People-Machine" built by an outfit called Simulmatics, Inc., the machine is a conventional IBM 704; but programmed with a—sensationally —unconventional "mathematical model of the United States electorate," distilled from thousands of pollsters' files. Designed by a Director of Columbia's Bureau of Applied Social Research and a Yale psychologist, the machine's first job was for the Democratic campaign committee in the Presidential election.

Meanwhile, Cornell researchers were teaching another electronic brain how to read. The "Perceptron" is designed with "electrical counterparts of eyes, nerve fibers, and nerve cells," to enable it to read and use ordinary language, instead of mathematical codes. During the same year, the Air Force put a new type of IBM to work translating technical works from Russian into English.

All this might have been happier news had it not coincided with a rash of metal-wig-flipping by Brains already in use: wrong scoring in college tests, for instance, and a hilarious series of goofs in a robotized Providence, R. I., post office. Tends to make one wonder if we may not be "building in" more parallels–with the human brain than we intended?

Introduction to I REMEMBER BABYLON by Arthur C. Clarke from Playboy

To build the better mousetrap has become—in this day of technological marvels—the easiest part of the job. It's getting the word to the path-beating public that really counts. And the path itself tends to resemble a nightmare behaviorist's maze (to switch rodents and metaphors) in which all the entrances are through opinion-taking and all the exits by way of opinion-making.

This was never so evident as in the year that began with the TV quiz scandals, progressed with "payola" and "public images," and included the launchings of the "Echo" and "Courier" satellites, advance scouts of moon-relayed worldwide no-fail radio, telephone and television communication.

No one is better qualified than Arthur Clarke to write about the possibilities inherent in the Echo program: world-traveler, cosmopolite, and lecturer of note, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and past President of the British Interplanetary Society, Mr. Clarke is the very model of a modern major science-fictionist. In addition to a quantity of superior fiction (see Harcourt Brace's 1959 omnibus collection, Across the Sea of Stars), he has written both technical and popular books on space flight, at least one vividly descriptive book on skin diving in Australian coral reefs, and any number of short articles. Between lecture seasons, space conferences, underwater explorations, and appearances before House Investigations Committees, he makes his home, in Ceylon.

Introduction to THE LAGGING PROFESSION by Leonard Lockhard from Analog Science Fact & Fiction

Readers of previous S-F annuals will remember Theodore L. Thomas's "The Far Look" and "Satellite Passage" particularly for the vivid personal realism of his near-future portraits of man in space. Mr. Thomas, who first trained as a chemical engineer and now practices law as a patent attorney, started his writing career under the pseudonym of Leonard Lockhard, and still uses that by-line for his series of humorous-instructive tales about the patent pursuits of Mr. Saddle and Mr. Spardleton.

In the introduction to "I Remember Babylon," I made a point of the real-life elements involved in the story. Obviously this is just as true of "Leonard Lockhard's" piece. Both authors are trained scientists as well as first-rate storytellers. Both are writing here about the same (genuine) idea of Mr. Clarke's concerning the television satellite which has been so much discussed in the post war (and may have become a reality by the time this reaches print). But it is important to remember that of these two pieces, only one is fact-written-like-fiction. The other is fiction-written-like-fact.

Introduction to REPORT ON THE NATURE OF THE LUNAR SURFACE by John Brunner from Astounding Science Fact & Fiction

The confusions, complexities, and internal contradictions of man's fumbling first steps off Earth are by no means confined to legal or political aspects. (Perhaps there are some readers, in other countries, who have not yet heard the one about the little boy in first grade at the Canaveral school who was asked to count backwards. "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one ... Back to the drawing board, men!")

While the rocket men struggle toward mechanical perfection, a whole new field of applied biology called "Space Medicine" is working feverishly to reduce the margin of human error to a reasonable risk by the time the man-carrying ships are ready to launch. I rather wonder, though, how much thought they've given at White Sands to the sort of human failure Mr. Brunner suggests?

John Brunner is one of the growing group of young British writers who have developed primarily in association with the consistently surprising Nova magazines—New Worlds and Science Fantasy—edited by Ted Cornell. (Both magazines, I am happy to say, are now being distributed in this country.) This selection is not from either of the British publications, but from Astounding (now Analog) representing the increasing trend toward the exchange of material on both sides of the Pond.

Introduction to J. G. by Roger Price from "J. G., the Upright Ape" (Lyle Stuart, 1960)

Best way to eliminate the human error factor is to dispense with the human? This excerpt—the first five chapters —from a book described on the jacket as "a novel about The Way Things Are, as discovered in the adventures of an innocent Hero . . ." tries (like NASA) using an ape instead.

It is hardly necessary to state that Roger Price is a funny man. (This is "Droodles" Price, "Mad Libs" Price and TV-comic Price we are talking about.) It is well worth stating, however, that his novel is not only funny, but very good satire indeed.

Introduction to CHIEF by Henry Slesar from Playboy

Henry Slesar, like several other new young writers, works at both mystery-suspense-psychological-thrillers and science-fantasy. In this vignette, he makes the jump from How Things Are to How They All Too Well May Be....

Introduction to THE LARGE ANT by Howard Fast from Fantastic Universe

There is no need, at this late date, to introduce to anyone the author of "Citizen Tom Paine" and "Spartacus." But for those of you who have not been aware that America's foremost chronicler of historical rebellion has turned his hand to the literature of contemporary social and scientific revolution as well, I should note here that this and other Fast science-fantasies (mostly from F&SF) are now available in a Bantam Books collection, "Edge of Tomorrow."

Introduction to A ROSE BY OTHER NAME by Christopher Anvil from Astounding Science Fact Fiction

Although the devices have ranged from magic formulae and well-bound voices to satellites and cybernetics, the essential criticism leveled at The Way Things Are (and Where Are They Going?) by the authors so far, contains one common theme: Our failures are those of communication.

Sometimes the failure is one of intent, sometimes of ability. There may be perception without comprehension, or comprehension with no power of articulation. The missing link may be mechanical, semantic, emotional. Often it is no more than the value-deafness that comes of mistaking volume for information. But over and again the trouble seems to lie in some part of the semantic act: the process of abstracting, symbolizing, and reciprocally conveying, mutually meaningful symbols.

Mr. Anvil here proposes a hair of the dog....

Introduction to ENCHANTMENT by Elizabeth Emmett from The Saturday Evening Post

No matter how indistinct the boundary between fantasy and science fiction, there are clearly defined areas on either side —and this story is undoubtedly "pure fantasy,' quite outside the limits of what I ordinarily call "SF" ...

Introduction to THIOTIMOLINE AND THE SPACE AGE by Isaac Asimov from Analog Science Fact & Fiction

This remarkable report does not actually concern a major breakthrough of the past year. The original publication of the discovery of Thiotimoline is, after all, fourteen years old now. But I feel that s-f readers have almost a vested interest in the progress of time research—as indeed also in the Good Doctor himself—and that the selection was especially appropriate here between Miss Emmett's strangely convincing traffic with the past, and Marshall King's story of young Purnie's time-play.

Introduction to BEACH SCENE by Marshall King from Galaxy

On all the frontiers, new and old, physical and speculative, the perils and hardships of exploration (be it danger of death, deprivation, excommunication, or no more than academic hilarity) attract two very different kinds of men: those driven by curiosity and those drawn to conquest—the seekers of light and the searchers for might. Often the conflict between them is even sharper than the endless quarrel between the frontiersmen (of all kinds) and those less restless souls who hold up the established foundations from which the explorers go forth.

This story is Mr. King's first published fiction.

Introduction to CREATURE OF THE SNOWS by William Sambrot from The Saturday Evening Post

The Ugly Earthman has had small chance as yet to assert his antagonisms aspace. But all along familiar planetary frontiers, explorers (of both breeds; questers and conquistadors) daily attack the boundaries of the unknown.

Last year, one of the oldest of old mysteries, the Abominable Snowman, was back in the public prints, under examination on two very different fronts.

Fellow name of Tschernezky in London (a reputable zoologist at Queen Mary College), made a plaster cast from photographs of footprints ascribed to A. Snowman; compared the cast's prints with those of similarly made prints of the several animals the A. S. is supposed to be; announced (according to Newsweek) that the photo prints had not been made by bear, langur, or mountain gorilla, but by a "very huge, heavily built, two-footed primate...."

Meantime Edmund (Everest) Hillary went back to the mountains to check the whole matter out; came back and published a series of loudly debunking articles, exposing all evidence offered to him as either fraudulent or honest error. (Whether he saw Tshernezky's plaster casts, I do not know.)

In any case, the public prints were full of A. S., and s-f was ripe for it; this was the year for Other Creature stories.

Introduction to ABOMINABLE by Fredric Brown from The Dude

Fred Brown, once best known—outside of s-f—for his award-winning mysteries, has of recent years become an irrepressible miniaturizer, publishing trios of fantasy-humor vignettes in one magazine after another. (A snap-crackling sampling of the Brown quickies is in his recent collection, "Nightmares and Geezenstacks," Bantam, 1961.) Here he foreshortens a situation only slightly different from Mr. Sambrot's.

Right up to the end, that is...,

Introduction to THE MAN- ON TOP by R. Bretnor from Esquire

This story, originally published by Esquire in 1951, was reprinted last year in Fantasy and Science Fiction—thereby barely justifying my inclusion of it here, to complete my Himalayan set of three.

Introduction to DAVID'S DADDY by Rose! George Brown from Fantastic Science Fiction

Call it magic, yoga, illusion, or psi, whichever you like. (What's in the name? Why, the way you go about investigating it, mostly....) The still very much unexplored potential of the human mind is, perhaps, today's most challenging frontier.

Mrs. Brown's treatment of the theme is as different from Mr. Bretnor's as psi and yoga. But in both (as in Miss Emmett's "Enchantment") there h the same odd background quality of truly fearful loneliness that seems somehow integral to such a story.

Introduction to SOMETHING BRIGHT by Zenna Henderson from Galaxy Magazine

Readers of those earlier S-F annuals in which Miss Henderson's chronicles of The People appeared ("Pottage" in 1956: "Wilderness" in 1958) will be happy to know that the long-delayed publication of the complete series is at last a fact ("Pilgrimage: The Book of the People," Doubleday, 1961).

Miss Henderson is, in private life, a schoolteacher in the primary grades, and most of her stories about children have been from the viewpoint of the sympathetic adult. This time she tells it through the child's own mind and eyes.

Introduction to IN THE HOUSE, ANOTHER by Joseph Whitehill from Fantasy and Science Fiction

I said somewhere earlier that this was the year for Other Creatures: extraterrestrials most of all, but by no means all. Again and again the underlying theme in the moss thoughtful stories—be they careful science-fictional extrapolations, or the wildest flights of fantastic imaginings—is the daily more urgent need to learn the means and modes of communication with All Those Others.

What is an Other? We have had (besides a variety of e-t's) dopplegangers and gremlins, computers and communists, apes, ants, and A. Snowman (or woman), a telepath, a tribal chief, a Holy man, and the unclassifiable flora of Pogoland.

Now Mr. Whitehill, an engineer as well as an author ("The Angers of Spring," and "Able, Baker, and Others") offers a description with lab-report conciseness, accuracy, and attention to detail.

Introduction to A SERIOUS SEARCH FOR WEIRD WORLDS by Ray Bradbury from Life

I do not know which was the most pleasantly startling: that this article was written by Ray Bradbury, genius of anti-science-fiction: that Life magazine devoted fourteen beautifully illustrated pages to it; or that the United States Government, in 1960, should have provided the basis for it.

Introduction to THE BROTHERHOOD OF KEEPERS by Dean McLaughlin from Astounding Science Fact & Fiction

Dean McLaughlin is a quiet, self-contained young man who works full time in a college bookstore, and in his spare time turns out, too infrequently, thoughtful and thought-provoking stories, mostly for Analog (Astounding).

He says that "half of the idea" for this story originated with his father (the Ann Arbor astronomer of the same name): "Xi Scorpii is a genuine bona fide binary star, roughly 80 light-years from here (and Lambda Serpentis would make a very good way-station stop en route). The twin stars actually could play catch with a planet as described in the story.

"The other half of the story's genesis was some remarks in Loren Eiseley's essay, 'The Fire Apes,' with which I didn't entirely agree...."

Introduction to HEMINGWAY IN SPACE by Kingsley Amis from Punch

Last year I took occasion to do considerable sniping at some sins of omission, and a few commissions, in Kingsley Amis's critical book on science fiction, "New Maps of Hell." When my first fine fury began to die down, it occurred to me that my fire might better have been aimed at the general literary reviewers (who took the Amis dicta as a sort of newstyle Holy Writ) than at the author, who never claimed infallibility for himself.

One of Mr. Amis's sharpest criticisms of science fantasy in general was the lack of good humorous writing in the field. From the examples he cited, and those he did not, I suspect we do not always laugh at the same jokes. Not always: at least one exception (and probably several more) appeared in the series of parodies published in Punch last year, when that venerable institution of humor announced it had ordered "SF stories in the manner of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope " etc.

Mr. Amis's expertise as a critic of s-f was assigned him by reviewers who did not know the science-fantasy field, but did know, and respect (with cause), the author's reputation as a leading "Angry Young Man" novelist and essayist. His expertise as a writer—in this case a superb parodist—is not the property of the reviewers, but very much his own.

Introduction to MINE OWN WAYS by Richard McKenna from Fact & Science Fiction

Two years ago I had the pleasure of reprinting in this collection Richard McKenna's first published story, "Casey Agonistes." "Mac" was 44 when he sold "Casey." Since then, he has established himself as a science-fantasy writer, made use of his first two careers (cowboy and sailor) in numerous stories and articles in the men's adventure magazines, sold a story to The Saturday Evening Post, and is now at work on a novel derived from his own experiences while based at the Navy's China Station.

Introduction to OLD HUNDREDTH by Brian W. Aldiss from New Worlds Science Fiction

In November, last year, the oldest British science-fiction magazine celebrated its 100th issue with an imposing array of stories contributed almost entirely by members of the group of young writers which has grown up around New Worlds and its sister magazine, Science Fantasy, under the editorial guidance of editor-agent-publisher-reviewer E. J. Cornell.

Some of the group now closely associated with the Nova publications were active in s-f before the emergence of New Worlds, and have been widely published in this country. These include such names as John Wyndham, J. T. McIntosh, and John Christopher. Others have become familiar to American readers in the last few years, partly at least through Carnell's energetic efforts to effect a mutual exchange of material John Brunner, Kenneth Bulmer, and John Rackham are among these; as are Brian Aldiss, E. C. Tubb, and J. G. Ballard—all of whom appeared in earlier editions of this anthology when they were little or not at all known in this country. There are at least a half dozen more whose names—I hope—we will be seeing more of here before long: writers of sustained quality, with ideas that are often fresher and more stimulating than most of what currently appears on the home scene. (Colin Kapp, John Kippax, Philip E. High, Robert Presslie, James White, Clifford C. Reed ...for instance.)

"Old Hundredth" was written specifically for the anniversary issue of NW—a story of the remote future when "We" are all "Others," and all "Others" are "We."

Introduction to BLUES AND BALLAD by Theodore R. Cogswell and Gordon R. Dickson

Whether or not s-f did (before Punch-parodies) lack humor, it is certainly true that its best boffs have seldom seen print. (Or I should have said, type,) Fan magazines are usually mimeographed, and only the official programs of the annual fan conventions are ordinarily transcribed.

These Labor Day weekends are virtually impossible to describe (without, at least, technicolor). But for spontaneous humor, song, skit, verse, quick-trigger emceeing, and sufficiency of the bon (mot or vivant), they would be hard to equal. In their songs, particularly—whether at national, international, or purely neighborly gatherings—s-f-ers in general antedated the recent return to roll-your-own, home-made music. Oddly, the music-story did not appear until recently, but s-f music (both in parody and in original) has been on-scene (behind the scenes) for years.

Herewith, a distinctive part of the tradition of the special world Inside Science Fiction....

Introduction to HOW TO THINK A SCIENCE FICTION STORY by G. Harry Stine from Analog Science Fact and Fiction

In August, 1957, I doubt there were a hundred men and women alive who rationally expected to see a man land on the Moon in their own lifetimes. There were, I should say, a couple of thousand, out of Earth's billions, who honestly believed such a development to be technologically possible, or historically plausible. By January of 1958, the swiftest intellectual revolution in history had occurred. But even then, our best hopes were slower than our best performance.

Dr. I. M. Levitt, director of the famous Fels Planetarium, was one of the few men already accustomed to thinking in terms of the challenge of space. Shortly after Sputnik, in an article in The New York Times, he predicted a manned rocket into space by 1968; a station in space by 1980; and a manned trip to the Moon about the year 2000.

Look magazine, in "Space Timetable" at the start of 1958, did not anticipate the first manned satellite till between 1970 and 1980 (on the basis of pooled scientific opinions); but lowered Dr. Levitt's estimate for the Moon trip, placing it "in the last decade of this century."

G. Harry Stine,-a rocket engineer who had been working at White Sands until S (for Sputnik)-Day, when he voiced his opinion of the U.S. space program ("Fat, dumb, and happy," was part of it), was rather more optimistic. He said 1967 for a man in orbit, 1970 for a manned space station.

Two years later—January, 1960—Look magazine printed a new timetable, agreeing with Stine's old guess on the space station, but making him look like a stodgy conservative otherwise: men in orbit by the end of 1961, they said, and the first man to the Moon between 1967 and 1969. But they also said 1963 for the Echo satellite which was launched eight months after the article appeared; and they figured the Soviet Venus probe (January, 1961) for early 1962. Once again these estimates were derived from a composite of best-informed sources.

Ex-rocketman Stine is now working for a research and development company in New York City, where he is closely associated with Col. William O. Davis, former chief of USAF Office of Scientific Research. (Stine's "Time for Tom Swift," in Analog, January, 1961, some of Davis's ideas on space flight, based on the notion that any practical system of transport must be "suitable for an aged grandmother visiting her grandchildren. . . .") The article that follows is excerpted from a longer essay, "Science Fiction Is Too Conservative."