More Words, Deeper Hole

Nightfall

And we close out DX with Asimov's classic tale of a civilization that only sees true, dark night once every couple of millennia. They don't deal with it particularly well. Don't ask yourself how these people manage things like mines or tunnels.

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A human starship encounters an alien craft near the Crab Nebula. With no idea what the capabilities of the aliens are or if their true intentions towards humans are hostile or benign, the humans struggle to find a way out of their dilemma that doesn't require them to destroy the aliens or spend their lives wandering the stars lest they lead the aliens to Earth.

This is another story where the adapters took liberties with the original to make it more downbeat. I think this was reused, actors and all, for X Minus One. It was also adapted by Exploring Tomorrow; DX and XMO had the better actors but ET stays truer to the original.

Untitled Story

A PI does his best to find out if the elixir his employer has been sold is really an elixir of life or deadly poison. It turns out he should have been more curious why someone might want to preserve his boss's life.

I like Robinson's work in general but this is a relatively weak example of it. The romance in particular feels forced.

The Veldt

In a future when the whims of little children are indulged far more than they should be, a well-meaning pair of parents becomes concerned over what they see manifesting in their children's virtual-reality-enabled, telepathic nursery. As turns out, they were not worried enough.

Another example of the children as monsters genre that was so popular in the 1950s. Looking at Bradbury's reflexive nostalgia and his distrust of kids and anything new, it's easy to see how ended up the person he did.

Dwellers In Silence

A generation after atomic war killed most of the life on Earth, three men return from the colonies on Mars to survey the wreckage. They are surprised to find a lone survivor and even more surprised to discover his family survived as well. Or so it seems. ( Read more... )

Child's Play

A hapless loser, equally inept at work and love, is inadvertently given an advanced toy from the future, which he uses to make himself a brand new man.

I think this was used by X Minus One. As I recall, although his would have been one of Tenn's first stories, it was reasonably popular.

A Pebble in the Sky

In a galaxy where the twenty million inhabitants of Earth are considered the lowest vermin, Imperial archaeologist Arvarden finds himself the one man in a position to oppose a terroristic and genocidal attack by Earth fanatics on the two hundred million worlds of the civilized galaxy.

So, the two striking differences between this and the novel of the same name are ( Read more... )

The Last Objective

Driven underground by the radiation of the final war, the survivors of the two factions struggle to prevail in the great war through the use of artificial men and weapons of mass destruction; both prove entirely too successful

Competition

Following the death of her parents, a young woman is on her way to settle in with her sister when she learns despite what it says on her ticket, all emigrants get dumped on one world (supposedly picked by a vote but the election is fixed) and the one she is headed for is not the one her sister lives on.

She is assured by a smirking crewman that a pretty girl like her will have no trouble finding employment and sure enough in short order she is abducted, poisoned and used as the bait in a trap for a local businessman.

I don't know how old the girl is but apparently not old enough to live on her own. This makes the bit at the end ( Read more... )

And The Moon Be Still As Bright

The first three missions to Mars reached that world and then vanished (if I recall correctly, one was bamboozled by Martians and killed, one got attacked by a jealous husband and killed, and one was taken for a group of madmen and killed) The fourth mission arrives to discover that one of the previous three gave the Martians chicken pox; lacking any resistance, the entire population has apparently died.

Many of the crew are happy to discover they are on what amounts to a latch-key planet but one crewman, upset at this accidental genocide and the lack of respect shown to the Martians, decides to adopt the identity of a Martian and take the vengeance the dead Martians cannot.

This is a cousin to Dances with Wolves, isn't it?