The Year's Best S-F, 5th Annual Edition by Judith Merril

It certainly would have been easier to receive the Took four months to get to Earth, and spent years studying our radioĪnd television.

I'm always trying to figure it out before they tell me.īy the way, I don't think we need spoiler warnings when we have timedĪs I read I wondered where Anthea was. So the self developing film was really more for the business end of the society than for the end consumer, even though the snoop bought it at a drugstore.Ī great mystery is always good to keep me interested in reading a story.

They would still have to take their film somewhere to get them printed. Most regular people that took pictures, went to a shop to have them developed and have printed pictures or slides made. It was for people who had a dark room or business who used one. I think at that time it was a niche product. Business to business technologies are a safer bet than depending on the fickle end consumer.Īnd that brings we to the self developing film that they made that 'the snoop' (I like that term) discovered.

I liked that alien's technologies he used were aimed mostly at businesses as opposed to consumer products, even though they made 73 consumer items. I also was a little disappointed in Tevis not showing any technological advancements in human society, since this part of the story is set in 1985, not 1963 when this was written. I enjoyed seeing earthmen from the eyes of an alien. Even NASA does as little of launching water as possible and recycles every drop they can. Taking water to Mars is way to expensive unless you have some kind of cheap teleportation. Then shipping that substance back to Mars. He is building a research project so I think it will be something like enriching uranium (but not uranium), but from a common substance on earth. I think he is here for an energy source as he mentions that “the Anthean power sources had been all but exhausted and the water gone.” He is already shown that they have different/advanced chemical processes which we don't understand. I don't think he is here prepping for an invasion or vacation. Space travel isn't that easy except in a solar system. Also, the Antheans had visited Earth in its 2nd ice age. I also thought that Anthea was probably Mars for the reasons that Jim thought. You have to allow for being made aware of being put into an alien point-of-view and understanding it, plus the build up of the great mystery.

Gents, you did a great job of summarizing the first 5 chapters so I won't do anything like that. But if Shadow and Tim, if you read this week's assignment as fast as I did, we can discuss it sooner than next Monday if you want. I like the story so much that I read all ten of our chapters for this week today. Anyone else joining us for this buddy read? Pamela, did you join Scribd? On Feb 8, 2021, at 11:18 PM, Jim Harris wrote:

The Year's Best S-F, 5th Annual Edition by Judith Merril