The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: 30th Anniversary Edition, October 1979 by Edward L. Ferman

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Last week I watched an episode of a show called Mythic Quest. But alas, it was a flashback episode and essentially a one-off. The episode centered around three characters working at a sci-fi magazine in the 70’s. I immediately wanted to read some golden age sci-fi (probably my favorite sci-fi).

There’s a few good stories here, particularly the Brian Aldiss, PKD, Harlan Ellison, and Sturgeon selections. This collection also includes Daniel Keyes’ short story Flowers for Algernon, which is fantastic.
But there’s quite a few stories here that go nowhere, and feel like cliche sci-fi tropes. For the most part this 1979 collection hit the spot, but I think I prefer my sci-fi collections to be of the Dangerous Visions variety.

My favorite passage comes the story Poor Little Warrior, by Brian Aldiss.

The story is set in the 23rd century. A man is having a sort of midlife crisis. He’s unhappy, in a failing marriage, and is generally overcome with ennui. So he picks up a brochure from a time-travel company in hopes of reinvigorating his life. He travels back to the Jurassic era to go big game hunting. As he hunts a brontosaurus he becomes overwhelmed by the beauty and majesty of the creature. He finds himself struggling to pull the trigger, because he realizes doing so will bring him no relief. This is what he says–
“I was foolish enough to think that 150 million years either way made an ounce of difference to the muddle of thoughts in a man’s cerebral vortex.”



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