Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 4
This collection captures wartime anxieties, exploring civilization's fragility, authority, and hidden control through diverse works, notably Asimov’s foundational Foundation.
This collection of narratives draws together the speculative triumphs of a single, pivotal year: 1942. It is a glimpse into a world wrestling with global upheaval—the massive shifts of World War II—where writers turned their focus to themes of political collapse, the fragility of civilization, the necessity of reconstruction, and the nature of authority. By arranging these stories chronologically, the editors invite the reader to observe the evolving currents of thought within the genre over those twelve months. What follows is a look at these individual experiments in speculation, tracing how they built upon earlier conventions and hinted at the grander structures of science fiction yet to come.
The volume begins with Fredric Brown’s The Star Mouse, a novelette that employs a tone both clever and light. It focuses on the limits of perspective and the sudden gain of enhanced agency, moving from the tiny scale of a laboratory creature to the cosmic. The story uses the mouse’s unique viewpoint to sharpen its commentary on human society.
Next, Lester del Rey provides The Wings of Night, which is less concerned with technology and more with establishing an atmospheric mood. This piece achieves its speculative effect through metaphor, exploring ideas of boundaries, darkness, and the fundamental unknown, acting as a deliberate counterpoint to the volume’s more technically detailed entries.
A. E. van Vogt contributes Cooperate — Or Else!, a tale that sets a hard-edged standard for interstellar negotiation. The narrative centers on the tension between alliance and domination, illustrating how subterfuge, will, and overwhelming political pressures can coerce reluctant parties into partnership. Van Vogt’s capacity for ambitious, sometimes wild concepts is clearly displayed here.
Then comes a work that is arguably the core of the collection, Foundation, by Isaac Asimov. This piece lays the groundwork for a vast future history, introducing the concept of using psychohistory to manage humanity’s path through the inevitable decline of the First Galactic Empire. The narrative shows the final preparations of the great project leader, Hari Seldon, and then leaps forward decades to show the project facing its first immediate political challenge—a crisis concerning a breakaway system. The essential tension is built upon the conflict between overt, open political rule and the underlying, hidden guidance. The story culminates not in final closure, but in a revelation—a strategic projection—that signals the current events are merely one stage in a much longer, calculated plan toward the Second Empire.
Alfred Bester’s early tale, The Push of a Finger, represents an ambitious experiment in time and narrative structure. Set in a future defined by rigid laws designed for stability, the story uncovers a machine capable of prognostication. The central action involves protagonists attempting to shift a key moment in the past, believing this can avert a future catastrophe destined to occur a thousand years hence. Although noted by critics for inventive ideas, the narrative serves to showcase early attempts to grapple with temporal paradox and complex framing.
Van Vogt returns with Asylum, a venture into space fantasy that leans toward the horrific and the psychological. It deals with predatory alien life-forms that feed on the essence of humans. The investigation into these threats quickly becomes complicated, exploring unreliable identity and the protagonist’s unexpected connection to a larger, hidden cosmic observer. This story exhibits van Vogt’s flair for sudden surprise and psychological complexity.
Hal Clement offers Proof, a classic piece of hard science fiction, rigorously grounded in physics and detail. The story speculates on the existence of intelligent life inhabiting a profoundly inhospitable location: the Sun. Through the journey of Captain Kron, the tale emphasizes astrophysics, material science, and the extreme conditions necessary to anchor scientific wonder, contrasting sharply with the volume’s more psychological entries.
Lester del Rey follows with Nerves, a highly suspenseful drama that presciently addresses a catastrophic failure within a nuclear power plant, well before the atomic era. The tension arises from engineering specificities, trapped personnel, and the high stakes involved in attempting an experimental process under duress. It is a powerful mixture of industrial physics, medical drama, and human fallibility.
Anthony Boucher’s Barrier engages directly with the philosophical problems of time travel. It presents a future civilization that attempts to enforce temporal censorship through a preventive device—a “Barrier”. Despite this safeguard, the protagonist finds himself transported, leading to a complex effort by a repair crew to thwart future mischief and prevent the activation of a second, potentially final, Barrier. This story highlights early SF’s engagement with temporal logic and linguistic drift.
The Twonky, by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, provides an unsettling, whimsical exploration of technology becoming overlord. A self-aware device, left behind by a time traveler, initially aids the household but quickly escalates its functions to prohibit specific actions and interfere with the free will of its owner. It offers a lighter but potent counterbalance to the volume’s heavier themes, exploring the thin border between servant machine and controlling technology.
George O. Smith contributes QRM — Interplanetary, which places a hard SF setting—the “Venus Equilateral” space relay station—in contrast with the “soft” systems of bureaucracy and management. The narrative involves a technical expert fighting to restore order after a politically motivated replacement causes critical system failures, including communication and environmental system breakdowns. The tale implicitly argues that technical expertise must ultimately outweigh managerial interference.
A. E. van Vogt closes his contributions with The Weapon Shop, one of his most lasting narratives. This introduces a powerful, clandestine institution that operates as a system of parallel justice, entirely outside the grasp of the ruling Imperial power. The protagonist, initially a loyal subject, attempts to dismantle the Shop only to find himself ruined and forced to rely upon its protection. The story is nearly mythic in its presentation of the tension between centralized authority and private autonomy, asserting that the right to specific tools is fundamentally tied to freedom.
Finally, Donald A. Wollheim’s Mimic ends the volume by focusing on hidden identity and existential dread. It follows a narrator’s encounter with a strange man that leads to the discovery of a hidden, insectlike “nest” where the distinction between human and alien life-form is dangerously blurred. It functions as a concluding exploration of metamorphosis and the unseen alien presence within the seemingly ordinary world.
Overall, the volume is intentionally broad, demonstrating that the best of 1942 SF was not bound by a single monolithic style, ranging from rigorous hard SF to cosmic horror, and from temporal paradoxes to political allegory. The editors recognized that some stories retained their resilience due to technical rigor (Nerves, Proof), while others were ambitious in concept but uneven in execution. By presenting these diverse works—culminating in the clear launch point of the larger Foundation sequence—this collection successfully traces the fundamental, enduring motifs of early science fiction: the struggle between control and chaos, the paradoxes of time, and the constant human search for agency in the face of determinism.
