My reaction to reading this book in 2005.

“Discovery of the Ghooric Zone -- March 15, 2337”, Richard A. Lupoff -- This strange H. P. Lovecraft tribute tale is the reason I read this anthology. Set exactly 400 years after Lovecraft’s death, mentioning several elements in Lovecraft stories. Specifically, most of the references are from Lovecraft’s sonnet cycle “Fungi from Yuggoth”. Yuggoth is a planet beyond Pluto in this story though in Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer in the Darkness” it was Pluto. The Ghooric zone is from sonnet 22 “Alienation”. Thog comes from sonnet 10 “The Pigeon-Flyers”. Thok shows up in sonnet 20 “Night-Gaunts”. The whole ending of the story, where Lovecraft’s body is found in a tomb on Yuggoth, seems reminiscent of something similar in sonnet 4 “Recognition”. In that sonnet, the narrator recognizes his own body on Yuggoth where “things which feasted were not men” -- shoggoths in the story, are present.) Some of the language seems reminiscent of particular Lovecraft passages if not outright quotes (I didn’t check.). I’m thinking specifically that the shore of the alien sea on Yuggoth is described like the sea in Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”.) Yet this story should not be thought of as a mere Lovecraft pastiche transplanted to the future. For one thing, the story opens in a very unLovecraftian way -- three cyborgs having sex with each other. (This story is from the seventies when cyborgs were one of the big motifs of sf.) The images of the cyborgs at the end entombed in a subterranean world of alien horrors is Lovecraftian. The interludes of future history which serve as background interludes are odd, baroque, but I think Lupoff, obviously a Lovecraft fan, is suggesting the alienating effects of time in a way similar to the vistas of the future in Lovecraft’s “He” or the odd bits of future history in Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Out of Time”. Some of those interludes are descriptions of the now, with their zeppelins and Silver Shirt American fascists, alien world of 1937 when Lovecraft, here revered as a prophet by one of the three cyborgs (why she has studied him is left unexplained). Like Fritz Leiber’s “The Terror from the Depths” from a year earlier, this story is a heartfelt tribute (though Lupoff, unlike Leiber, did not personally know Lovecraft) using elements of Lovecraft’s stories to do something more than a pastiche. Both focus on Lovecraft’s last days. And both would have been written around the 40 anniversary of his death.) Leiber chooses to cover more of Lovecraft the man even if it is farming bits of his characters to his own creations and Leiber’s character. Lupoff focuses more on his death and time and gives us a baroque future tale where Leiber stayed in 1937. Both are quite good.

“The Magnificent Conspiracy”, Spider Robinson -- This is a hippy wish fulfillment and doesn’t seem to have much of a speculative element. Though not a big fan of his, I expected more from Robinson than giving us a professional assassin narrator and a billionaire with unexplained uses for him. The billionaire has some plan to reform the world. (One of the hippy elements is the playing of the Peter, Paul, and Mary song “The Great Mandella”.) There is no speculative element, not even of some unusual technology. The story has some interest as a Vietnam era tale since the narrator, a former hero from that war, feels guilty that his conscientious objector brother died in Leavenworth. However, because of the vagueness of the story, we’re not sure what the billionaire means when he scorns the two brothers as “tragic expiators” and the narrator is chided for being an “egocentric bastard” who doesn’t realize he can do some good in the world.

“Allies”, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro -- This is one of those seventies sf stories that had a point. Unfortunately, it’s a feminist point that each sex responds to the terrors and discomforts found in adventure sf in identical ways thus we get a plethora of carefully chosen, sexually ambiguous names and prose which deliberately conceals the gender of the characters. This contrivance is unconvincing and annoying -- much like trying to conceal the race of a character but even less justifiable. The protagonist Chris seems to have been involved in a homosexual relationship but has, perhaps, a sexual attraction to Jes who is of the opposite sex. For awhile, I was willing to forgive the contrived gender politics for a tale of corporate/government exploitation and an explanation of what strange thing lurked in the swamp and was killing people. Even that plot point was made vague even though it had nothing to do with sex. It appears that Jes has discovered the identity and power of the resource the Rare Resources Board has put the characters on the planet to protect from possible alien exploitation.

“The Curandeiro”, Thomas F. Monteleone -- Inspired by Arigo the psychic surgeon of the “rusty knife” who was the subject of a 1975 book, this tale’s central point of interest is the idea of an undercover alien cop pursuing an alien doctor on our world -- interesting because extending life via medicine is forbidden, abandoned idea on the aliens’ worlds and punishable by death. The alien society practices a form of social Darwinism. However, the alien cop finds himself not only fascinated by the idea of healing but, when his own circumstances force it, accepts medical aid.

“Harry’s Note”, Theodore Sturgeon -- The variety of ideas and plot devices whipped together here show why Sturgeon was a short story master. Not only do we have the oh-so-seventies motif of a possible energy shortage, but Timothy Leary’s speculations on untapped human potential, an invisible alien who talks to our hero, the person of Sturgeon detailing what the protagonist sent to him, the sad stories the protagonist collects (including one about the parrot of the explorer Humboldt and how he speaks in the language of an extinct Amazon tribe), statistical typing, and the narrow window the human mind has for language acquisition. The last provides the metaphor for the story : that there was some mutation in the human gene which would have enabled us to solve many of our problems -- but that we never recognized it and never used it and now the time is past to do so. Sturgeon’s skill doesn’t make the idea particularly compelling.

“Mindseye”, Elizabeth A. Lynn -- Aliens and telepaths are probably my two least favorite themes in sf, and this story has both. One of my problems with telepath stories is the seem to always involve the manipulation of images to assault the mind via emotional associations. While that may lead to flashy writing, the seeming inevitability of the plot can’t be disguised. Still, I liked this story all right. I liked, even though it wasn’t very original, the idea that hyperspatial travel could lead to autism. This is another story weakened by a vague ending -- maybe I wasn’t paying that close of attention because I wasn’t that interested. However, it seemed to me this hyperspatial induced autism lead to the protagonist being permanently trapped in her mind when confronted with a telepathic alien who did not wish her any harm.

“The Man Who Was Pregnant”, Elizabeth A. Lynn -- As I recall, it was in the late 1970s when the speculative idea of male pregnancy, spurred on by some medical idea I don’t know of, enjoyed a brief vogue. This story is more of a vignette on the sensuality a male pregnant with child might find than any serious exploration of the idea. While there is some attempt to suggest the actual and possible reactions of the medical community and regular people at the novel reality of a pregnant male, mostly we have the subjective feelings of the pregnant male and his eventual delivery of a child. We don’t even get an explanation for how the pregnancy occurred.

“The Dark of Legends, the Light of Lies”, Charles L. Grant -- This attempt (according to the introductory notes -- and there are some similarities) to do a Ray Bradburyesque exploration of a future where a beloved art form (here novel writing) is dying out was interesting for a while. However, the story failed at the end when it became a merely ok “monsters from the Id” story with the revelation that a string of murders has been done by the dark forces the narrator has conjured back into the world with his half-belief -- a half-belief fostered by the reading of old novels. The depiction of editing and producing the morbid art form of the novel was interesting though.

"How's the Night Life on Cissalda?", Harlan Ellison -- This is Harlan Ellison operating in full bravado, hyperbolic, deliberately offensive and funny mode. One Enoch Mirren, pioneering temponaut, comes back literally sexually entangled -- almost unbreakably so -- with a very alien, extra-dimensional Cissaldan. The Cissaldans, who descend on the Earth to have sexual congress with all sorts of people famous (including one of Ellison’s favorite targets, Anita Bryant), are disgusting. They are also “the most perfect fuck in the universe” and irresistible. (The list of attempts to pry Mirren away from the first Cissaldan is told in very much the same rhetoric as the list of brainwashing techniques used in Ellison’s “’Repent, Harlequin!’, said the Ticktockman”.) After Mirren and the Cissaldan are separated after being locked up in an underground government research facility (the vaguely detailed escape from that facility is self-consciously compared to a bad pulp story), Mirren finds that there are no more Cissaldans to pair off with, that the aliens will eventually retire from Earth, and the cockroaches will supplant man on Earth. ( )