Jupiter

ed. by Frederick and Carol Pohl

Speculative Fiction by Science Fiction’s Master Prognosticators

introduction by Isaac Asimov

Ballantine Books, 1973

Collection of short stories by Asimov, Pohl, Clifford D Simack, Arthur C Clarke, James Blish, Poul Anderson, and others.

Reading this book took me back to all the SF books I read when I was growing up. My mother had tons of SF paperbacks all over the house. I devoured them all, and so reading this collection was nostalgic for me, and so I can’t be truly objective. But I’ll try:

Basically, it’s a collection of stories whose one theme is the planet Jupiter, and the stories were written at different times (individual copyrights range from 1934 to 1971), and so were influenced by what was known about the planet at those given times. The stories themselves had different themes: some are adventure fiction, some are speculative, some are more psychological in scope. In some the planet is the central focus and in others it’s simply the background.

I like the idea of this theme, and the variety that it allows, and I would actually like to see more collections such as this.

Personally, my favourite part of the book was in the foreward by Pohl, in which he described a cruise to the Bahamas that he took with Carl Sagan, Robert Heinlein, Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and their wives, in 1972 or 73, when the idea for this collection took shape, and it suddenly gave me the most wonderful sensation (as I’m certain any other purveyor of SF would given this setup) – what wonderful conversations must have happened upon that cruise? Can you imagine those intelligent, creative, wonderful intelligences, all together in that one space? What brilliant ideas must have been discussed? All matters of science simply rolling off the cuff.

Now THAT would be a story worth reading!

As I said, only other SF fans like myself and my mom would truly have the same spinal thrill thinking about that.

For the rest of you, read the book – and introduce yourself to the wonderful world of classic SF!!!!

VG