Some of the MY FAVORITE SF STORIES anthologies feature stories that the writer choses from his or her oeuvre. But in Marty Greenberg’s My Favorite Science Fiction Story (1999), writers chose stories they love written by other writers.

Several of my favorite SF stories grace the Table of Contents. Love C. M. Kornbluth’s “The Little Black Bag.” What happens when a doctor’s kit from the Future shows up now? The results will surprise you.

I’m also fond of Cordwainer Smith’s “The Ballad of Lost C’mell,” one of his most moving Instrumentality stories. And who can forget Keith Laumer’s classic “The Last Command”?

A couple of these stories were new to me (or I had completely forgotten I read them). “Black Charlie” by Gordon R. Dickson explores what Art really is. And Greenberg cleverly ends this wonderful anthology with one of C. M. Kornbluth’s darkest (yet insightful) stories about the price of ignoring the lessons of History. All in all, this is a great collection of stories. The short essays by the chosers also provide additional information about the writer and the story. Highly recommended! How many of these stories have you read? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction — ix

The man who lost the sea / Theodore Sturgeon — Chosen by Arthur C. Clarke — 1

The last command / Keith Laumer — Chosen by Anne McCaffrey –13

Day million — Frederik Pohl — Chosen by Joe Haldeman — 32

The little black bag / C.M. Kornbluth — Chosen by Fredrick Pohl — 38

A galaxy called Rome / Barry N. Malzberg — Chosen by Mike Resnick — 67

Diabologic / Eric Frank Russell — Chosen by Andre Norton — 86

Untouched by human hands / Robert Sheckley — Chosen by Alan Dean Foster — 108

Black Charlie / Gordon R. Dickson — Chosen by Poul Anderson — 123

The ugly chickens / Howard Waldrop — Chosen by Harry Turtledove — 139

The mathenauts / Norman Kagan — Chosen by Greg Bear — 162

Lot / Ward Moore — Chosen by Connie Willis — 178

The ballad of lost C’mell / Cordwainer Smith — Chosen by Lois McMaster Bujold — 205

A Martian odyssey / Stanley G. Weinbaum — Chosen by L. Sprague de Camp — 226

Common time / James Blish — Chose by Robert Silverberg — 262

The engine at heartspring’s center / Roger Zelazny — Chosen by Greg Benford — 273

Nerves / Lester del Rey — Chosen by Mariam Zimmer Bradley — 282

The only thing we can learn / C.M. Kornbluth — Chosen by David Drake — 356

SOUL, the new Pixar animated feature, features Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a frustrated Middle School band teacher, who finally gets his Big Break to play with an established Jazz musician. But one mis-step sends Joe from New York City to the steps of the Great Beyond.

Joe is given a chance to alter his fate when a precocious soul named 22 (voiced by Tina Fey) is placed in his care. Joe needs to show 22 that Life is worth living, that Life on Earth is worth the risk, and that Human Experience is fulfilling.

SOUL is directed by Academy Award winner Pete Docter (“Inside Out,” “Up”), co-directed by Kemp Powers (“One Night in Miami”). Jon Batiste’s original jazz compositions power the music in this film while musicians Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross also composed the film’s score.

If you’re looking for some musical diversion, SOUL will take you there. Are you a fan of Jazz? GRADE: B

The Bright Book of Life is basically Harold Bloom’s choices of the best novels ever written. When you boil all these books down, Bloom think’s Moby-Dick and In Search of Lost Time are the two greatest novels. But I have a few quibbles. I’ve read most of these novels. I have never heard of Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen. I like Ursula K. Le Guin but I would not consider The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed among the greatest novels. And where is Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude?

Some of Bloom’s choices are a little strange, too. The Ambassadors is a very good Henry James novel, but is it really better than Wings of the Dove? Does Joseph Conrad deserve three novel choices while George Orwell’s 1984 is ignored?

How many of these novels have you read? What are your favorites? GRADE: B+

Table of Contents:

Preface The Lost Traveller’s Dream xi

1 Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes 3

2 Clarissa Samuel Richardson 22

3 Tom Jones Henry Fielding 33

4 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 39

5 Emma Jane Austen 46

6 Persuasion Jane Austen 52

7 I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) Alessandro Manzoni 61

8 The Red and the Black Stendhal 66

9 The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal 71

10 The Vautrin Saga: Old Goriot, Lost Illusions, The Splendor and Misery of the Courtesans Honore De Balzac 76

11 The Captains Daughter Alexander Pushkin 82

12 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte 93

13 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray 101

14 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 112

15 Bleak House Charles Dickens 152

16 Our Mutual Friend Charles Dickens 156

17 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 161

18 Les Miserables Victor Hugo 166

19 A Sportsman’s Notebook Ivan Turgenev 172

20 First Love Ivan Turgenev 181

21 The Cossacks Leo Tolstoy 190

22 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 197

23 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 215

24 Hadji Murat Leo Tolstoy 229

25 The Return of the Native Thomas Hardy 238

26 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 244

27 The Princess Casamassima Henry James 254

28 The Ambassadors Henry James 258

29 Nostromo Joseph Conrad 261

30 The Secret Agent Joseph Conrad 268

31 Under Western Eyes Joseph Conrad 273

32 The Reef Edith Wharton 277

33 The Rainbow D.H. Lawrence 286

34 Women in Love D.H. Lawrence 291

35 Ulysses James Joyce 300

36 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 354

37 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 377

38 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 387

39 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 391

40 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 411

41 The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen 427

42 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 434

43 The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 447

44 The Dispossessed Ursula K. Le Guin 460

45 The Loser Thomas Bernhard 466

46 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 472

47 The Rings of Saturn W. G. Sebald 485

48 Book of Numbers Joshua Cohen 504

Afterword The Changeling 511

“Anthony Gilbert” (aka, Lucy Beatrice Malleson) presents readers with a famous British art collector, Sampson Rubenstein, found murdered in a locked room in his country house. The millionaire was supposed to have taken a young adventuress, Fanny Price, to the train station yet his car is found smashed at the bottom of a cliff.  The police expect to find Rubenstein’s body there as well, but it’s missing. A week or more later Rubenstein is found stabbed to death in the treasure room in his own house.

The mystery is narrated by Simon Curteis, an adventurer who has fallen in love with Fanny Price who has been charged with Rubenstein’s murder. Curtis enlists lawyer Arthur G. Crook to help him find the real murder. Anthony Gilbert delivers a twisty plot and a double surprise ending. If you’re looking for a classic mystery from 1936, Murder By Experts will leave you with your head spinning! GRADE: A

Back in September 2018, motivated by James Wallace Harris, I embarked on rereading the 25-volume The Great SF Stories series edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg (you can check out the beginning post here). My plan was to reread and review a volume each month and I managed to stay on schedule for the next two-and-half years.

Now, I’m back to reread and review the 25-volume The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction series. I plan to replicate the one-volume review per month model so this project will be completed in 2023.

This first volume is unique for its inclusion of non-SF writers like Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, and Oliver LaFarge. The early issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction regularly reprinted “classic” stories by famous authors.

Here are some of my favorite stories from this anthology:

“Elephas Frumenti” and “The Gift of God” are Gavagan’s Bar stories which L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt wrote over the years to the delight of readers. If you like tall tales, you’ll enjoy these shaggy dog stories.

“Old Man Henderson” takes place in a future when Venus and Mars have been colonized, and exotic animals have been imported to the Earth from these planets. Henderson is a retired astronaut, the first man to set foot on the moon, but, instead of being a revered hero, everyone in town is sick of hearing his story of the moon landing and he lives alone, avoided by everyone. Kris Neville illustrates the ephemeral aspects of Fame.

“Dress of White Silk” by Richard Matheson shows the nightmare results of a child’s actions. Matheson would return to this theme in some of his later stories.

As you might suspect, several of these stories are dated. But Boucher and McComas provided material to a growing readership in these genres. A good beginning! GRADE: B

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction by Anthony Boucher & J. Francis McComas — ix

Huge Beast” (1950) by Cleve Cartmill; — 3

“John the Revelator” (1951) by Oliver La Farge;  — 12

“Elephas Frumenti” (1950) by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt; — 27

 “The Gift of God” (1950) by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt; — 33

“The Friendly Demon” (1726) by Daniel Defoe; — 40

“Old Man Henderson” (1951) by Kris Neville; — 45

“The Threepenny-Piece” (1913) by James Stephens;  — 58

“No-Sided Professor” (1947) by Martin Gardner; — 68

“The Listening Child” (1950) by Margaret St. Clair [as by Idris Seabright]; — 82

“Dress of White Silk” (1951) by Richard Matheson; — 94

“The Mathematical Voodoo” (1951) by H. Nearing, Jr.; — 100

“Hub” (1951) by Philip MacDonald; — 120

“Built Up Logically” (1949) by Howard Schoenfeld; — 126

“The Rat That Could Speak” (1860) by Charles Dickens; — 139

“Narapoia” [Dr. Manly J. Departure]” (1948) by Alan Nelson; — 145

“Postpaid to Paradise” (1940) by Robert Arthur; — 153

“In the Days of Our Fathers” (1949) by Winona McClintic; — 170

“Barney” (1951) by Will Stanton; — 178

“The Collector” (1951) by H. F. Heard; ” — 181

“Fearsome Fable” (1951) by Bruce Elliott — 214

I grew up listening to Soul Music (mostly in the 1960s) so this 3-CD set provided a lot of memories. But, it also provided a few surprises. I was familiar with James & Bobby Purify’s “I’m Your Puppet” (a Top 10 hit in 1966), but I’d never heard Dionne Warwick’s version before I listened to these CDs. It was very good.

For irony, there’s Ike and Tina Turner’s “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” (it didn’t for them). And, for a classic One Hit Wonder, there’s Fontella Bass’s “Rescue Me.” The only head-scratcher is “Leader of the Pack” by The Shangri-Las which I don’t consider a Soul song.

James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Sam & Dave, Dionne Warwick, Wilson Pickett, The Shirelles, Otis Redding, Martha Reeves, and many others from that 1960s era provide some sweet soul music on this 3-CD set. Are any of your favorites here? GRADE: B+

TRACK LIST:

1	–Percy Sledge	When A Man Loves A Woman	2:53
2	–Aretha Franklin	I Say A Little Prayer	3:30
3	–Martha Reeves & The Vandellas	Dancing In The Street	2:36
4	–Jackie Wilson	Reet Petite	2:43
5	–Sam Cooke	Only Sixteen	1:54
6	–Billy Stewart	Summertime	2:41
7	–Ben E King*	Spanish Harlem	2:56
8	–Otis Redding	Satisfaction	2:42
9	–Wilson Pickett	If You Need Me	2:31
10	–Big Dee Irwin + Little Eva	Swinging On A Star	2:23
11	–Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes*	If You Don’t Know Me By Now	3:30
12	–Ike & Tina Turner	Somebody Somewhere Needs You	2:33
13	–Dionne Warwick	I’m Your Puppet	2:59
14	–The Staple Singers	Let’s Do It Again	3:28

TRACK LIST:

1	–Ben E. King	Stand By Me
2	–Aretha Franklin	You Make Me Feel (Like A Natural Woman)
3	–Lee Dorsey	Holy Cow
4	–Sam & Dave	Soul Man
5	–Jackie Wilson	Higher & Higher
6	–Percy Sledge	My Special Prayer
7	–Martha Reeves	Heatwave
8	–The Tams	Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me
9	–Soul Survivors	Expressway To Your Heart
10	–Sam Cooke	You Send Me
11	–Ike & Tina Turner	It’s Gonna Work Out Fine
12	–Dionne Warwick	Who Gets The Guy
13	–Wilson Pickett	Down To My Last Heartbreak
14	–Otis Redding	I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)

TRACK LIST:

1	–Fontella Bass	Rescue Me
2	–Aretha Franklin	Chain Of Fools
3	–The Shangri-Las	Leader Of The Pack
4	–Otis Redding	Shake
5	–Jackie Wilson	Doggin’ Around
6	–Sam Cooke	Everybody Likes To Cha Cha Cha
7	–Percy Sledge	Take Time To Know Her
8	–Harold Melvin And The Blue Notes	Wake Up Everybody
9	–James Brown	You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down
10	–Sam & Dave	Sweet Soul Music
11	–Ramsey Lewis	The “In” Crowd
12	–Archie Bell & The Drells	Tighten Up
13	–The Shirelles	Foolish Little Girl
14	–Dionne Warwick	Only Love Can Break A Heart

I’m a fan of wizards from Merlin to Harry Dresden to some of the magical folks in this anthology. “The Witch’s Headstone” by Neil Gaiman is my favorite story in Wizards. A young boy who doesn’t realize the powers he possesses attempts to help the ghost of a witch…with startling results. Neil Gaiman is a master of this type of story.

I also liked Patricia A. McKillip’s “Naming Day” where a young girl, on the cusp of her magic education, encounters some weird difficulties. Very clever!

“Stonefather” is part of Orson Scott Card’s Mithermages series where a young boy discovers his true nature. I’ve read a lot of Card’s work, but not the Mithermages series so now I’ll have track down those books.

Wizards offers a variety of stories for just about every reader interest. GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

PREFACE by Jack Dana and Gardner Dozois — ix

• “The Witch’s Headstone” by Neil Gaiman — 1
• “Holly and Iron” by Garth Nix — 25
• “Color Vision” by Mary Rosenblum — 58
• “The Ruby Incomparable” by Kage Baker — 83
• “A Fowl Tale” by Eoin Colfer — 99
• “Slipping Sideways Through Eternity” by Jane Yolen — 105
• “The Stranger’s Hands” by Tad Williams — 119
• “Naming Day” by Patricia A. McKillip — 139
• “Winter’s Wife” by Elizabeth Hand — 153
• “A Diorama of the Infernal Regions, or The Devil’s Ninth Question” by Andy Duncan — 187
• “Barrens Dance” by Peter S. Beagle — 219
• “Stone Man” by Nancy Kress — 234
• “The Manticore Spell” by Jeffrey Ford — 284
• “Zinder” by Tanith Lee — 263
• “Billy and the Wizard“‘ by Terry Bisson — 277
• “The Magikkers” by Terry Dowling — 284
• “The Magic Animal” by Gene Wolfe — 299
• “Stonefather” by Orson Scott Card — 326

Diane and I saw the play version of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in 1995 at the Studio Arena Theater in Buffalo, NY. This more recent movie version on Netflix features Viola Davis as the Diva of the Blues, Ma Rainey. Davis plays Ma Rainey as capricious and moody as a legendary blues singer could be. Chadwick Boseman delivers an Oscar-worthy performance as troubled trumpeter, Levee Green, a member of Ma Rainey’s band, The Seasoned Georgia Jazz Band.

Most of the action centers around a recording session in Chicago at the Paramount recording studio in the 1920s. The white men who run the company try to cater to Ma Rainey’s whims because they know her records will earn them a lot of money.

As in many of August Wilson’s plays, there’s an undercurrent of violence in the action as race, art, religion, and the historic exploitation of black recording artists by white producers trouble the characters.

Have you seen Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom? GRADE: A

Joseph Henrich, a professor at Harvard, maintains that we have become wealthy and successful because we’re Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD). Taking a historical approach, Henrich provides the formula for societies to out-perform other societies (and either defeat them or absorb them).

This 680-page book examines the ways countries can invest in their people to produce economies that generate wealth and power. Henrich shows how people who are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, analytical, and trusting of strangers tend to succeed. Some societies require strict adherence to social norms and values. But time and time again, Henrich shows that people who focus on themselves–their special attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations–tend to be confident, progressive, and astute.

Henrich explores the differences in family structures, marriage, and religion that produce such different results. And, of course, the impact of markets on the economies of countries result in the wealth–or poverty–of nations.

If you’re the mood for a comprehensive Deep Dive into why the West dominates the world (although China is creeping up), give The WEIRDest People in the World a try. GRADE: A

Table of Contents:

Preface xi

Prelude: Your Brain Has Been Modified 3

What God Wants 7

The Histories of Religions, Biologies, and Psychologies 16

Part I The Evolution of Societies and Psychologies

1 WEIRD Psychology 21

Really, Who Are You? 24

Marshmallows Come to Those Who Wait 38

UN Diplomats Get Parking Tickets 41

Obsessed with Intentions 49

Missing the Forest 52

The Rest of the Iceberg 55

2 Making a Cultural Species 59

Evolved to Learn 61

Evolving Societies 68

Avenues into Your Mind 82

3 Clans, States, and Why You Can’t Get Here from There 87

How Ilahita Got Big 88

When, How, and Why Did Societies Scale Up? 103

Getting to Premodern States 112

Going End Around 121

4 The Gods Are Watching. Behave! 123

Moralizing Gods and Contingent Afterlives 128

The Evolution of Gods and Rituals 139

Hell, Free Will, and Moral Universalism 146

Persuasive Martyrs and Boring Rituals 148

The Launchpad 151

Part II The Origins of WEIRD People

5 WEIRD Families 155

Dissolving the Traditional Family 159

The Carolingians, Manoriaiism, and the European Marriage Pattern 186

Downstream Transformations 191

6 Psychological Differences, Families, and the Church 193

Kinship Intensity and Psychology 194

The Church Altered Kinship and Changed Psychology 224

Opening the Floodgates 230

7 Europe and Asia 233

The Church’s Footprints 234

Psychological Differences Within China and India 244

Fertile Ground 252

8 WEIRD Monogamy 255

A “Peculiar” institution 258

Polygyny’s Math Problem 263

A Testosterone Suppression System 268

Trust, Teamwork, and Crime 274

Putting the Pieces Together 281

Part III New Institutions, New Psychologies

9 Of Commerce and Cooperation 287

Market Integration and Impersonal Prosociality 290

“No Hui, No Market Towns” 301

The Commercial and Urban Revolutions 307

Round Up 320

10 Domesticating the Competition 322

War, Religion, and Psychology 322

Europeans Made War, and War Made Them WEIRDer 332

Taming Intergroup Conflict 340

When and Why? 350

Harnessing the Power of Competition 357

11 Market Mentalities 360

How Work Became Virtuous 367

Be Yourself: The Origins of WEIRD Personalities 379

It’s Big, but How Big? 390

Part IV Birthing the Modern World

12 Law, Science, and Religion 395

Universal Laws, Conflicting Principles, and Individual Rights 398

Representative Governments and Democracy 407

The WEIRDest Religion 415

Dark Matter or Enlightenment? 427

13 Escape Velocity 430

Wiring Up the Collective Brain 442

More Inventive? 460

Psychology and Innovation in the Modern World 465

Escaping the Trap 466

14 The Dark Matter of History 469

Guns, Germs, and Other Factors 474

Globalization and Its Discontents 484

Appendix A Milestones in the Marriage and Family Program 491

Appendix B Additional Plots 499

Appendix C The Psychological Impacts of Relational and Residential Mobility 501

Notes 507

Bibliography 585

Index 657