Time Untamed (book review).
Now here’s a surprise. Back in the day, most SF publishers put out a few SF anthologies annually. Like ‘Time Untamed,’ it allowed famous authors to be on the cover and ensure their fans bought the book, if only for one of them, and might be enticed to try others. If I’m reading my Roman numbering correctly, all the stories were written in 1967. As with all anthologies, there is a scattershot, but not all to any particular taste.
This one is an oddity. The opening story, ‘Sally,’ by Isaac Asimov, isn’t one I remember from him. Ex-chauffeur, now the runner of a farm for disused AI cars. Jake Folkers is proposed by Raymond Gillhorn to sell some of the cars so their AI component could be put in a new car chassis. Even the offer of half the money doesn’t sway him, and when Gillhorn returns with thugs to take them all, the cars strike back. Sally is one of them. Despite having positronic brains, these cars do not speak but let their emotions out in other ways.Now here’s a surprise. A Ray Bradbury story, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” is really a science fiction story.
A writer receives a message from 500 years in the future through his typewriter. One has to presume it’s an electric one. He’s convinced by the lady from Here’s a surprise. A Ray Bradbury story, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” is really a science fiction story. A writer receives a message. An old plot, but he is convinced of the future through his typewriter, which he assumes to be an electric one.rigue. Particular people at various parties Beck has run have had a successful one-off from one of its guests later. One of them was with a song, and he was tone deaf. Journalist Tom Conway, a friend of Beck’s, investigates, sure something is going on, especially as at college neither were particularly rich, and Beck is now loaded.
I do think the reason could have been sharper, but it does hold your attention.John Wyndham’s ‘The Eternal Eve’ has Amanda Vark leaving a camp on Venus when they are stranded, not wishing to be used for breeding. She lives with the native griffas, shooting the men who try pursuing her but ends up keeping one wounded man alive before sending him back to the camp. An old idea, but clever enough to work.For the record, the other authors are Robert Bloch, Clifford Simak, L. Sprague De Camp, and Fritz Leiber. I’ve read better work for all of them but might appeal to you.
GF Willmetts
January 2025
(pub: Five Star, 1967. 175 page paperback. Price: varies).