Customer Reviews

The World Turned Upside Down

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm conflicted about how to review this, because--on the one hand--I'd read a good three-quarters of the stuff in it before (in some cases, quite a long time before.) On the other hand, there was some new stuff, and the "liner notes" for each story were often interesting. You could probably put together a very good literature class around the stories in this volume.

On the gripping hand...riffing on classic sci-fi is a bit pretentious.

Anyway...as with most compilations of early sci-fi, this is a good selection of famous short stories. If you're looking for a book to get someone started on science fiction (or trying to give some culture to someone who buys John Ringo for the covers) then you couldn't go far wrong with "World Turned Upside-Down". Be warned, though, that the content in some of the stories is a rather PG-13 (and some of them involve themes that younger kids simply won't get.)

From the title and the cover painting, you would expect this to be alternate history, but the cover and title are extremely misleading. It is, in fact, an anthology of old "classic" science fiction stories. Two of the three editors of this compilation--Drake, and Flint-- are two of the most popular authors at Baen books, and Jim Baen, of course, is the publisher. The stated purpose of the collection is to showcase works that "turned the world upside down" for the editors-- the science fiction stories that shaped and focussed their thinking at a young age. So the book gives you a window to see what the classic SF influences were on (at least some of) the works that Baen Books publishes. Each story comes with an introduction or afterward (or both), by one of the three editors, explaining why this story was selected, and how it "turned the world upside down" for them. The stories range from 1933 ("Shambleau") to 1967 ("The Last Command"). Some have been highly reprinted; others never before in book form.
With that said, the quality of the stories is amazingly erratic. Some of them are genuine SF classics. Some of them are feel-good stories, fun plots but not well written. A handful of the stories are simply awful: "Code Three," for example, by justly-forgotten author Rick Raphael, is bad in almost every possible way: unbelievable society, wooden characters, no noticible plot, laughable speculation. Even this, though, is in its way a useful reminder not to look at the past with gilded glasses-- it wasn't all wonderful, some of it was forgettable indeed.
Overall, a good addition to a library of old classics of sf.

The three editors in this case have put together a selection of stories that influenced them as kids, some are obscure, some most definitely not. Certainly an interesting bunch, and definitely no junk here.

Rescue Party - Arthur C. Clarke
The Menace from Earth - Robert A. Heinlein
Code Three [Clay Ferguson] - Rick Raphael
Hunting Problem - Robert Sheckley
Black Destroyer [Beagle] - A. E. van Vogt
A Pail of Air - Fritz Leiber
Thy Rocks and Rills - Robert Ernest Gilbert
A Gun for Dinosaur [Reginald Rivers]
Goblin Night [Telzey Amberdon] - James H. Schmitz
The Only Thing We Learn - C. M. Kornbluth
Trigger Tide - Wyman Guin
The Aliens - Murray Leinster
All the Way Back - Michael Shaara
The Last Command [Bolo] - Keith Laumer
Who Goes There? [as by Don A. Stuart] - John W. Campbell, Jr.
Quietus - Ross Rocklynne
Answer - Fredric Brown
The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
The Cold Equations - Tom Godwin
Shambleau [Northwest Smith] - C. L. Moore
Turning Point - Poul Anderson
Heavy Planet [with Frederik Pohl] - Lee Gregor
Omnilingual - H. Beam Piper
The Gentle Earth - Christopher Anvil
Environment - Chester S. Geier
Liane the Wayfarer [Dying Earth] - Jack Vance
Spawn - P. Schulyer Miller
St. Dragon and the George [Jim Eckert] - Gordon R. Dickson
Thunder and Roses - Theodore Sturgeon


An alien survey ship is surprised to find that the Earth system sun is going nova well ahead of schedule, and gets in trouble itself when it goes to look for people to save and can't find signs of life, until much later.

3.5 out of 5


The cozy friendship between two teenage would be spaceship designers on the moon is interrupted when a well built actress from Earth arrives from a holiday, utilising both their services as guides.

4 out of 5


Future traffic policing is a 24 hour a day live in your vehicle job for these officers. Their banter is very entertaining.

3.5 out of 5


Alien scouts go for gruesome merit badge.

3 out of 5


A ship's crew lands on a planet and meets an alien with extraordinarily dangerous abilities.

3.5 out of 5


A dark star interloper rips the earth out of its orbit, and everything freezes. One family finds a way to construct a shelter to survive the freezing.

3.5 out of 5


A man and his mutant bull rebel against their society's liking for violence.

3.5 out of 5


History full of blowing stuff up and big fat fibs.

3.5 out of 5


Secret agent man gadget sabotage predictions.

3.5 out of 5


For friendly encounters, get rid of the xenophobic psychos.

4 out of 5


Aggressive sleepers may be waiting.

3.5 out of 5


A Bolo is a cybernetic supertank, basically. In this story, an old inactive one comes to life.

3 out of 5


A discovery of a lifeform buried in the Antarctic ice causes serious problems for an isolated research team.

5 out of 5


Crow not as smart as it looks.

3.5 out of 5


Computer god.

3 out of 5


Immortal humans breed too fast for the universe.

4 out of 5


Kid is a waste of oxygen.

5 out of 5


Shoot vampire gorgon women, don't ask them in for dinner.

4.5 out of 5


Assimilating smart people is key.

4 out of 5


Tough conditions for deadly conflict.

3.5 out of 5


Archaelogists working on the extinct Martian civilisation discover a different sort of Rosetta stone.

4.5 out of 5


Alien invasion couldn't stand the weather.

4 out of 5


The city can change people, and also learn 'em.

3 out of 5


Stuff is not very likely, especially spores from space making a mangod facsimile.

3.5 out of 5


Human, dragon and knight team-up vs the bad guys.

3.5 out of 5


With everything nuked, limitation, hope and waiting is all that can be done.

4.5 out of 5

Far from a collection of the best scifi of the last seventy-five years, this is, instead, a gathering of scifi stories that the editors thought were noteworthy when they encountered them long ago (or in some cases, other stories by authors they thought were noteworthy for their novel length efforts). Some are genuinely great or noteworthy because of their impact on the field (e.g., Thunder and Roses), but far too many are ponderously long, like those Twilight Zone episodes of yesteryear that had reasonably cool ideas, but just were twice as long as they needed to be (e.g., Code Three, The Gentle Earth). Others have admittedly illogical plots (e.g., The Cold Equations) or are admittedly filled with purple prose (e.g., Spawn). Too many of the editorial comments before and after the stories touch on what wasn't included because it was too long or too often anthologized elsewhere. I would have preferred more editorial comments on the chronological context of the stories and on what they influenced or were influenced by in the field of science fiction writing. The simple mechanics of indicating the year of the story at its beginning (you can check the copyright info at the front if you want to flip back and forth) would have been helpful and interesting. I also agree with other reviewers that the title and the cover of the anthology are misleading, suggesting alternate history stories (the actual theme is revealed in the text on the inside jacket--but you shouldn't have to read that to get the feel of an anthology's theme). Overall, not as good or as instructive as I had hoped it would be.

Do you ever pine for that one great science fiction story you read as a kid, lost in some back issue of astounding or TMOFASF, with a forgotten title and author, never to be found again? The editors here have gathered all those together in one place. I can't tell you how many lost gems there are in this collection, or how many times I exclaimed, "That's who wrote that! I read this once 30 years ago and have been looking for it ever since!' Well worth every penny.

David Drake, Eric Flint and Jim Baen are a powerful combination of literary forces together in The World Turned Upside Down, in which publisher Baen joins with two top authors to gather the stories which made them sci fi fans in their youth. Sources used range from Analog to Weird Tales from the early 30s on and pack in some of the finest names in the field: a must for any 'best of the best' reader of the genre.

I thought that this would be an anthology of the stories that MANY science fiction writers found good during their formative years. If I had known that it would be just the editors' personal choices, I would have stayed away.

The problem is that I hate the works of the editors with a passion, so of course what they liked, I hated. All about guns and military personnel and wars and police and bombs going off. When the stories weren't about guns, they were about babes in spacesuits, which I find equally insipid. Even the classics that everyone likes,the editors liked for the wrong reasons.

"The Menace from Earth" -- not a realistic near-future Lunar society, but "what every boy goes through." Sorry to burst your bubble, but lots of boys don't.

"A Gun for a Dinosaur." Not time travel, but "Hunting dinosaurs! Cool!" I guess it's only interesting if you can shoot it.

And the book ends with by far the most depressing story I have ever read (well, except for Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People), giving me a bad taste in my mouth. If that was the first science fiction story I ever read, it would certainly have been my last.

Sense of wonder, indeed! Sense of despair!