James Nicoll Reviews

1988’s Unknown Worlds: Tales from Beyond is the other 1988 Unknown retrospective anthology edited by Stanley Schmidt¹.

To quote Wikipedia:

Unknown (also known as Unknown Worlds) was an American pulp fantasy fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1943 by Street & Smith, and edited by John W. Campbell. Unknown was a companion to Street & Smith’s science fiction pulp, Astounding Science Fiction, which was also edited by Campbell at the time; many authors and illustrators contributed to both magazines. 

But first! A clarification!

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1978’s Lifeboat Earth is the second volume in Stanley Schmidt’s Kyyra series. Whereas the first volume was a novel, Lifeboat Earth is a fix-up, composed primarily of novelettes.

With the wavefront from the Milky Way’s exploding core only eighteen years from Earth, the only way out is to equip Earth with a propulsion system provided by the alien Kyyra and flee for the Andromeda Galaxy.

The plans exist! The technology exists! The only impediment is the inefficient governments running the Earth. By the time the dithering officials make a decision, the Earth will be dead.

Clearly the only reasonable solution is for Henry Clark, the World Science Foundation’s Lieutenant Commissioner of Grants, to appoint himself Earth’s supreme autocrat.

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Stanley Schmidt’s 1988 Unknown¹ is an anthology of fantasy stories first published in Unknown magazine.

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Stanley Schmidt’s The Sins of the Fathers is the first volume in his Kyyra duology. It was first published as an Analog serial in 1973 and came out in a mass-market paperback edition in 1976.

The starship Archaeopteryx is sent out with a three-man crew to a point 130 light-years from Earth, there to use modern astronomical equipment to intercept the wave front from the S Andromeda supernova. The ship returns with unexpected results. 

Things did not go well on the ship. Dr. Donald Lewiston went mad and murdered skipper Dirk Borowski before he was subdued by ship’s mate Jonel Turabian. This is a major disappointment to Henry Clark, Lieutenant Commissioner of Grants, since the expedition falls under his purview. 

Things will not go well for the Earth. Turabian informs his bosses that the core of the galaxy has exploded. A lethal wavefront of deadly radiation has spent 30,000 years creeping across the 30,000 light-years between the core and Earth. That wave front is at most twenty light-years from Earth.

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1982’s Analog​’s Children of the Future is the third installment in the Analog Anthologies, all of which were edited by Stanley Schmidt. As one might guess from the title, all of the stories are drawn from the pages of Analog(some from the days when it was called Astounding). All of the stories involve children.

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