Enjoying space rovers

kw: book reviews, science fiction, collections, anthologies, short stories, space opera

In addition to the books on paper that I usually read, I keep a few e-books in my phone's library (Google Play Books). That gives me something to read when I am not at home or when it is inconvenient to carry a book. I recently encountered the Megapack series, a collection of more than 300 compilations in numerous genres, including many classic science fiction collections. I took advantage of a promotion to get a few books for a dollar or two each.

The Robert Silverberg Science Fiction Megapack contains 23 stories by Silverberg, mostly from the 1950's plus a few from the 1980's, in 460 pages. Page 460 is a gigantic "page" (30 screens) of Megapack advertising.

I recognized a few of the stories, but most were new to me. This is mainly because most of them predated the time I began reading science fiction in 1967. Silverberg wrote more novels and fewer short stories after about 1960, and gave much time in the 1970's and onward to editing anthologies.

Reading these stories brought me back to why I love science fiction, particularly prior to the 1990's. Space Opera is my hometown. A spaceship, to Silverberg and his ilk, was a special kind of automobile, one that could cross a galaxy the way we might cross a continent in a multi-day road trip. Little attention was given to how a rocket might cross light-years and light-decades in a matter of hours or days. Sometimes one finds mention of "subspace" or "hyperspace", but usually there is nothing about that. These "space cars" run on some kind of super-gasoline. There is even mention of an "auxiliary fuel tank" in at least one story. It reminded me of the special lever in my 1962 VW Bug, that connected a one-gallon reserve tank, so I could go 20 miles or so to find a gas station when the main tank emptied.

The focus of these stories was not really technology of space flight, but the relationships between the humans in the stories and between them and sundry alien species. This is similar to the Star Trek and Star Wars universes, with numerous aliens of many types (but most of them are "humanoid", making it easier on the actors).

The dictum of John Campbell was, "Pose a problem, and then solve it." Silverberg's earliest stories included an opponent, either someone who was the problem, or one who wanted to prevent the solving of the stated problem. Later stories are more sophisticated, but the problem always gets solved. In a few cases, a protagonist may lose his life in so doing, but most stories have a "happy ending".

I will limn just one story: "Valley Beyond Time" (12/1957) puts a few humans and a few aliens, a total of nine persons, in a magical valley, where they are thrall to a "watcher". They grow younger while there. Without giving too much away, this pre-echoes the episodes of Star Trek that feature the omnipotent alien Q.

Space opera may be out of date, but I for one revel in the clever solutions its heroes produced. Science fiction is about exploration of ideas, more than any other genre. That keeps me going.