2.0 out of 5 stars
archetypal New Wave content from 1971, December 11, 2011
`Protostars' (271 pp.) was published by Ballantine in 1971; the cover artwork is by Gene Szafran.
`Protostars' is unapologetic New Wave sci fi, released at the apogee of that movement, and thus about as representative an example of the genre as any anthology of the era.
Each of the stories - which are new and never previously published - gets a rather pretentious introduction by editor Gerrold, who imparts various anecdotes and bits of wisdom about Being A Writer.
Among the better stories in the anthology are `Eyes of Onyx', by Edward Bryant, a downbeat tale set in a decrepit, near-future LA. `Afternoon With A Dead Bus', by editor Gerrold, is a clever re-imagining of an African landscape within the inner city. Barry Weisman's `And Watch the Smog Roll In' adds a sardonic note to the eco-disaster theme much in fashion in the early 70s. `The Naked and the Unashamed', by Robert E. Margroff, also uses satire to examine the topical early-70s theme of unrest on campus.
Other serviceable tales include Pamela Sargent's `Oasis', which deals with an alienated recluse who is better left alone in his lair in the Sinai desert. `My Country, Right or Wrong' by andrew j. offutt (no typos, spelling one's name in lowercase was a `hip' affectation for New Wave authors) is a time travel story about a revolutionary who finds the future may not always turn out like we want it to turn out. `I'll Be Waiting for You When the Swimming Pool is Empty', by James Tiptree (i.e., Alice Sheldon) is a humorous take on what happens when youthful idealism meets a planet ripe for manipulation
The remainder of the contents are....well....pretty unimpressive.
All suffer from the authorial self-indulgence, the desire to Say Something Profound, the exaggerated sense of Artiness, that plagued much of New Wave fiction.
Stories by Scott Bradfield, Stephen Goldin, and Alice Laurence are short, rather underdeveloped fables. `In A Sky of Daemons' by Larry Yep, and `Cold, the Fire of the Phoenix' by Leo P. Kelley, try to be avant-garde and wind up being incoherent. `Holdholtzer's Box' by David R. Bunch, and `The Five-Dimensional Sugar Cube' by Roger Deeley, are lightweight tales that use SF tropes to say something about the human condition.
The final story in the collection, `Side Effect', by Pg Wyal (that's not a typo) displays a common sin by the New Wave movement: aping the prose style of William Burroughs. Back in the early 70s such tales were catnip to editors like Gerrold, Damon Knight, Brian Aldiss, and Harlan Ellison, all of whom were anxious to demonstrate that SF was morphing into `speculative fiction', a sub-genre that deserved due notice from the literary establishment.
Readers determined to sample New Wave content will want to check out `Protostars', but I suspect other readers with not find much here that is rewarding.
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