Tales Of Terror From Outer Space (1975)

[Gloomy Sundae]

Tales Of Terror From Outer Space - ed. R. Chetwynd-Hayes (Fontana, 1975)

Introduction - R. Chetwynd-Hayes

Ray Bradbury - I, Mars
Ray Nelson - Eight O'Clock In The Morning
Robert Bloch - Girl From Mars
Brian W. Aldis - Heresies Of The Huge God
Ralph Williams - The Head-Hunters
Sydney J. Bounds - The Animators
Robert Presslie - The Night Of The Seventh Finger
Charles Birkin - No More For Mary
Bob Shaw - Invasion Of Privacy
Arthur Porges - Ruum
Claude Veillot - The First Days Of Spring
Robert Scheckley - Specialist
Arthur C. Clarke - No Morning After
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - Shipwreck

Robert Bloch - Girl From Mars: what with the bad weather, poor takings and his girl Mitzie running off with Rajah the magician, Carney boss Ace Lawson hasn't had much luck of late. It seems all that is about to change when the Platinum girl walks in, asking to see the Girl from Mars. Ace explains that she, Mitzie, was a fake, bat wings and all, but hits on the idea of hiring this bombshell to take her place. She gives him some spiel about being from Mars - or "Planet Rekk" as it's known to its inhabitants - her rocket having crashed to Earth during an electrical storm. She also keeps reminding him that she's very hungry ...

Charles Birkin - No More For Mary: One of Birkin's rare and increasingly bizarre excursions into SF. Author Toby Lewis, holidaying in San Bernando, discovers a beautiful jewelled insect and decides it will do nicely for sister Mary who's something big in Lepidoptera at Oxford. The "bug" is actually Zeon, a visitor from a far more developed and benevolent society than our own who are intent on colonising Earth by peaceful means and saving us from ourselves. After the hapless Toby has left him exposed near an ants nest, Zeon suffers a cruel and agonising death while trying to free himself of his spacesuit.

R. Chetwynd-Hayes - Shipwreck: Starts well as a spaceship falls to earth, bringing with it Sarcan, a translucent blue formless mass who can drain every living thing of its essence and assume its identity. After experimenting with a tree and a hare, Sarcan encounters his first human being, South Londoner Sydney J. Beecham who is motorcycling home to wife Sylvia and her domineering mother, Mrs. Hatfield. Up until now, it's been very enjoyable in a 'fifties, The Blob-like way, but once he's introduced the women, RCH gets stuck in another of his "aren't mother-in-laws interfering old battle-axes?" ruts and the story fizzles out.

[Calenture]

Bob Shaw is a much-missed author. I really enjoyed his novel Night Walk about a man who's blinded and imprisoned, then makes a gadget that lets him see through the eyes of animals and birds. He also wrote A Real Downer in Dark Voices 3 and Love Me Tender in New Terrors 1.

Another that I have, but haven't read yet, is Waltz of the Bodysnatchers in Pete Weston's Andromeda 1 (not an anthology that you'd have picked up, of course. ;D