F/SF

A superior anthology, with more than the three authors that are mentioned. Well worth reading. ( )

Orbit was an anthology series that ran for about a dozen years from the mid 60's to the mid 70's. A total of 21 volumes appeared, simply numbered Orbit 1, Orbit 2 ... Orbit 21. Each edition presented stories newly written for the collection. I read a number of these when I was younger and sought them out as a source of new and interesting stories. They are primarily science fiction and some I would consider mainstream, or lightly fantasy, and spooky/horror, and they now serve as little time capsules of the sorts of stories being written in those years. You would get some edgy, experimental stuff in these collections but generally you could count on finding some fairly high quality stories to reward the patient reader.

Orbit 8 was published in 1971 and contains 14 original stories, all from 1970. Some of the authors are famous and a number of them I don't recall ever hearing of before. These are the included stories:

• Horse of Air • shortstory by Gardner Dozois
• One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty • shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• Rite of Spring • shortstory by Avram Davidson
• The Bystander • shortstory by Thom Lee Wharton
• All Pieces of a River Shore • shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• Sonya, Crane Wessleman, and Kittee • shortstory by Gene Wolfe
• Tablets of Stone • shortstory by Liz Hufford
• Starscape with Frieze of Dreams • shortstory by Robert F. Young
• The Book • shortstory by Robert E. Margroff and Andrew J. Offutt
• Inside • shortstory by Carol Carr
• Right Off the Map • shortstory by Pip Winn
• The Weather on the Sun • novelette by Ted Thomas
• The Chinese Boxes • shortstory by Graham Charnock
• A Method Bit in "B" • shortstory by Gene Wolfe
• Interurban Queen • shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• The Encounter • novelette by Kate Wilhelm

Some of the included stories here are very good, and some are just plain awful, and a number as you would expect fall into that middle "OK" zone. I won't go over each story. The good ones make it worth reading through this anthology, and as I note, you get a little tme capsule of what was in writer's minds (and an editor) circa 1970.

One of the best tales here, Gardner Dozois' Nebula nominated story "Horse of Air" opens the collection. It is a very disturbing look at a future world gone to ruin. A future very close to 1970. A man sealed in a small apartment in a tower building "for his protection" watches the world around him, powerless to do a thing. We quickly realize the state of the man's mind and also realize he is not a nice person.

Another very good story follows, Harlan Ellison's "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty." I've read this story long ago I think (in a Year's Best collection), and it was also made into an episode of the 1980's reboot of "The Twilight Zone." This is a time travel story where a man, Gus, goes to a house he lived in 35 years before in Ohio, and standing in his old backyard late at night rather mysteriously goes back in time ... to try and give his younger self some help. It is nostalgic and sentimental and a little sad. Possibly my favorite story here.

I really don't like to disrespect stories because they represent an author's hard work. Avram Davidson has been dead for over 20 years, however, so there's no possible chance for hurt feelings when I say that the strange folk tale that is the "Rite of Spring" had me cringing a little in its six page journey. The strange farmer wife in this fairytale saying "Done and done and Bradstreet." Really? Yikes. Bad fantasy. On the other hand the Editor obviously liked the story so others may too. I also disliked Gene Wolfe's disturbing "Sonya, Crane Wessleman, and Kittee." It wasn't the story content as much as the odd storytelling and odder name-dropping within the story. Confusing effete way of writing that put me off quickly. The puzzle of Kittee was just dropped there also. This, to me, seems like the germ of a larger story that wasn't allowed to grow and be polished. Later we get another Wolfe, "A Method Bit in "B"" that I did like, an interesting, clever (and short) story. That "B" is as in a B-movie, and this is detective fiction twisted this way and that.

I'm not a big fan of R. A. Lafferty, but I really liked "All Pieces of a River Shore" which vies with the Ellison story as possibly my favorite in this collection. This is also one of the longest stories, and is about a "rich Indian" named Leo Nation who collects things and his latest passion spooks the hell out of him and a friend. He has begun to collect picture reels from 18th century carnivals and as he finds and examines them he begins to believe that certain ones are many thousands of years old, showing the Mississippi River shore and creatures long extinct that were probably around at the time of the last ice age. These 15,000 year old images and the details they seem to contain really spook him. I think Lafferty could have expanded this to novella length and elaborated on things hinted at, but it works well as it is.

I rather liked Carol Carr's small piece "Inside." A woman in a mysterious house surrounded by mist eventually discovers she is dead. I also enjoyed Pip Winn's "Right Off the Map," a cute little piece set in a bleak future where a man discovers a place hidden from "civilization."

Kate Wilhelm's Nebula nominated "The Encounter" was an unusual wrap up for the stories, a psychological-suspense thriller type that didn't seem to fit with the other stories. I didn't care for it.

The misses among these stories, and there are several, really keep me from giving this anthology a higher overall rating. Thom Lee Wharton's story, like Kate Wilhelm's, didn't fit into this collection in the slightest and I am really puzzled why it was included. It was one of the weaker stories also. Nevertheless there are some very good stories that were a pleasure to read and get the brain thinking about things. 4 star stories, some of them. Several of the stories I didn't discuss were interesting stories with provocative ideas. I'd recommend this to fans of science fiction's history. ( )

Contents list at bottom of this page:
http://contento.best.vwh.net/t59.htm