I’m a fan of Hank Davis’s science fiction anthologies. I’ve reviewed his A Cosmic Christmas (Volumes 1 & 2) here, The Baen Big Book of Monsters here, As Time Goes By here, and Future Wars here. Now, to kick of the New Year, we have Hank Davis’s latest SF anthology, Worst Contact. It’s a mix of classic stories of First Contact gone wrong as well as a few original stories. I liked “Puppet Show” by Fredric Brown and “The Flat-Eyed Monster” by William Tenn a lot. If you’re looking for entertaining science fiction with plenty of surprises, this new anthology delivers.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
FROM FIRST TO WORST by Hank Davis
PUPPET SHOW by Fredric Brown
CONTACT! by David Drake
THE FLAT-EYED MONSTER by William Tenn
THE POWER by Murray Leinster
EARLY MODEL by Robert Sheckley
HER SISTER’S KEEPER by Sarah A. Hoyt
PLAYTHING by Larry Niven
RANDOM SAMPLE by T. P. Caravan
NO LOVE IN ALL OF DWINGELOO by Tony Daniel
FIRST CONTACT, SORT OF by Karen Haber and Carol Carr
FORTITUDE by David Brin
THEY’RE MADE OUT OF MEAT by Terry Bisson
ALIEN STONES by Gene Wolfe
PICTURES DON’T LIE by Katherine MacLean
BACKWARDNESS by Poul Anderson
DODGER FAN by Will Stanton
NO SHOULDER TO CRY ON by Hank Davis
HORNETS’ NEST by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
PROTECTED SPECIES by H. B. Fyfe
THE CAGE by A. Bertram Chandler
SHADOW WORLD by Clifford D. Simak
Just to read the names of those classic authors makes me feel wistful …
I’ve probably read most of the stories – when we’re in Germany next week I’ll have to browse again my library.
Thanks, George, for bringing up the memories!
Wolf, WORST CONTACT is a mix of old and new stories. I read some of these classics decades ago, but it was fun to reread them!
A lot of good names there, His anthologies generally provide a lot of fun reading.
Jeff, Hank Davis anthologies are packed with top-notch stories. I also enjoy Hank’s informative introductions to the stories.
Given how often he touched on the matter, I’m startled that there are no Damon Knight stories here…
Todd, “To Serve Man” could have fit right in this anthology.
To say nothing of “Stranger Station,” “Four-in-One” and not a few more…
“Babel II”…to go dig up TP Caravan shows some knowledge of the “backfield” after all…
Todd, Hank Davis anthologies cast a wide net.
Knight’s “Babel II” really should’ve been included…Caravan can be good, but Knight was tops…
I’ve read almost all of them, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a very good anthology indeed. Thanks, George.
Rick, Hank Davis does a nice job with these anthologies. There are more in the pipeline.
Will Stanton? Wow! He was one of the authors I used to look for, but he didn’t do much SF.
BTW, I have never read “They’re Made Out of Meat”, but for some reason it seems to have been filmed repeatedly. There are multiple versions on YouTube.
Steve, Will Stanton is an underrated writer. I was glad to see Hank Davis included “Dodger Fan” in this volume.
Actually, Steve, a bunch of different posts of the same short film…there’s an audio adaptation that the Skiffy Channel’s old website’s “Seeing Ear Theater” also commissioned. Both decent.
I thought that would be the case when I first ran across but there really are different versions, Todd. There are a bunch that start with someone walking toward a diner, and these look like they are all the same. But there is at least one black and white, one animated, and at least two others. Maybe some kind of film school assignment?
Not forgotten, George. Never even heard of Hank Davis’s science fiction anthologies. But I’m glad I do now.
Prashant, I’m especially fond of a collection Hank Davis did for BAEN BOOKS of Gordon R. Dickson’s work.
I’m getting in on this way late, having just bumbled into this site while searching for something else, and though I should mention that, in an ideal universe (not the one I’m presently in, certainly) I would included Damon Knight’s “To Serve Man” in WORST CONTACTS, but on the basis of past experience at trying to get another Knight piece for an earlier anthology, and failing, I sighed and didn’t try. There are writers who are too expensive for my word rate (Bradbury and Asimov, for example) and other who seem to have agents who are determined that their writers should not be reprinted — I will not say who, nor speculate on their thought processes. Getting back to Knight, to whom I am perpetually grateful for buying my third real story (the fourth, if I cound the one I sold to Harlan Ellison, but since that has never been published, 50 years and change later, I won’t count it, even if I was paid for it . .. twice), I might instead have used his “Idiot Stick,” which would also fit, and is less well known than the other stories named by previous correspondents. Probably not “Babel II”, however, since IIRC that is a novella, and would take up too much space in an anthology with my length limits. The fifties and sixties were the times when I was reading most intently, particularly the second half of the fifties when I was a rotten kid and, to steal Zelazny’s phrase, had “the selectivity of a sponge” (I’m presently clocking in at 75, and my health could be better), so when I think up a theme for an anthology, titles of stories pop into my head without my breaking sweat. It’s the seventies on, when my reading time was considerably reduced, that I have to research to locat more than oldie moldy goldies. But I’m growing garrulous, as old geezers tend to do, so I need to shut up as soon as I mention that OVERRULED!, an anthology of sf tales of shys- er, attorneys, courtrooms, and new, improved(?) punishments is coming in April 2020.
Hank, I’ll be buying OVERRULED! in 2020. I’ve loved SF lawyer stories since Pohl & Kornbluth’s GLADIATOR-AT-LAW. Hope your health improves!