6th Annual Edition: The Year's Best S‑F edited by Judith Merril

[james_davis_nicoll]

Sample the best SFF of the year of my birth!

6th Annual Edition: The Year's Best S‑F edited by Judith Merril

Comments

[patrick_morris_miller]

Did Stine ever reconsider his Dean Drive iwanttobelievery?

[james_davis_nicoll]

I am not aware of his having done so.

[beamjockey]

Direct quote from Jerry Pournelle:

Harry Stine died convinced that it he had seen a reactionless drive, and that one could be built.

A morbid fascination with the Dean Drive affair led me to collect issues of Astoundalog where the original hype appeared.

A puzzle I have not yet been able to explain:

Why did Harry Harrison sell a belated Dean Drive novel to Analog in 1969, years after the fuss had blown over?

I suppose it's no mystery why Campbell bought it. It got a swell Kelly Freas cover that plainly says, "This is a story about a submarine that flies to the Moon."

[james_davis_nicoll]

Stine wrote a Dean Drive novel in _1980_.

[beamjockey]

That's right--I'd forgotten!

Would it be possible to collect "Five SF Novels about the Dean Drive?"

Setting aside the question of whether it would be any fun to write that column.

Also, is it time for a new generation of Dean Drive novels?

[james_davis_nicoll]

Enjoy!

[scott_sanford]

I remember that novel! I think even as a credulous teenager I spotted that the gimmick was pretty silly (some way to tune a laser such that it had recoil, but only in one direction, somehow - I think) but I recall the antics afterward as amusing.

[(Anonymous)]

I've only read Zenna Henderson's "Something Bright". I have never even heard the titles of most of the others.

Teka Lynn

[philrm]

I do remember Clarke's "I Remember Babylon" (I believe I read it in a collection of his short SF, many, many years ago), mostly because even at the time it struck me as just really odd.

The only others stories in this volume I've encountered are the McKenna and Amis's Hemingway pastiche, which I think is hilarious.

[beamjockey]

Moore, Henderson, and Brown do not disappoint.

Which Brown does not disappoint? Or is it both of them?