Just Finished Reading: Antigrav edited by Philip Strick (FP: 1975)

This was a short book of short stories published from 1969-1975. I think the theme of the collection was, as far as I can tell, humour. The 70’s was a time of experimental literature – and nowhere more so than in the Fantasy/Sci-Fi realm – and it seemed that a big part of that experimentation was the use of off-beat or plain bizarre humour in a SF setting. Most of the time this just didn’t work for me. This was reinforced by a number of stories in this book that had little plot, poor dialogue and which rested their narrative (such as it was) mostly on the strangeness of the story rather than thinking it through. Making sense (to any great degree) seemed to be some kind of defeat. After all its SF/Fantasy so it doesn’t have to make sense… right?  By far the best story, simply head and shoulders above the rest was The Alibi Machine by Larry Niven (1973) which told of an editor who plans to kill one of his writers and who planned to use a matter-transmitter to concoct the prefect alibi. Naturally it all goes wrong and he can’t transmit out of the crime scene but fails to think through his other options properly. It’s a clever insight both into the use/abuse of technology and the failure of imagination caused by the too heavy reliance of that technology. Overall not recommended.