Galactic Empires Volume 2
Brian W. Aldiss (editor)
308 pages
published in 1976

For some reason I read Galactic Empires Volume 2 without having read Galactic Empires; probably just because I came across it earlier when burrowing through our stack of still unpacked boxes of books. Which of course meant that all of Aldiss careful work in creating a suitable order in which to read the stories in the collection were for nought. Oh well. It's still a collection of fun and pulpy stories about that most hoary of science fiction cliches: the galactic empire.

It's funny to see how Aldiss, who was one of the writers in the vanguard of the New Wave, which was supposed to do away with old-fashioned junk like galactic empires in science fiction, turned out to be such a nostalgia hound a few years later. He did a whole range of these exercises in nostalgia like Galactic Empires in the seventies, culminating perhaps in his own history of science fiction, Billion Year Spree, which again looked with something of distaste to then modern science fiction, in favour of the old pulp stuff. Not that all this is necessarily a contradiction: Aldiss must've been a science fiction fan after all to have become a science fiction writer, so must've liked the old, pre-New Wave stuff even if he wasn't blind to its faults.

In fact, this collection shows Aldiss must have some affection for the old pulp sf, as so many of the stories here are quite pulpy, in one way or another. As Aldiss explains in his foreword, galactic empires (and space opera in general) may not be serieus but they are appealing as a setting, an escape from the doldrums of everyday life.

• Escape to Chaos -- John D. MacDonald
  MacDonald may be better known as the creator of Travis McGee, but he was a good science fiction writer too; unfortunately it didn't pay as well. Here we have the story of the youngest son of the ruler of a hidebound empire trying to forment rebellion, being helped and manipulated by agents of a higher power, who gradually realise they're being manipulated as well..
• Concealment -- A. E. van Vogt
  The Delian supermen had been hiding for 15,000 years in concealment from the empire. Now one starship had reestablished contact, but would they be able to persuade the single captured Delian to show the location of their worlds?
• To Civilize -- Algis Budrys
  Despite having lived there for generations, when the Voroseii ordered all humans off their planet, they obeyed without hesitation. Why did they not resist?
• Beep -- James Blish
  The Service makes sure that life goes smoothly for galactic civilisation, solving crisises almost sooner then they appear --but how does the Service know when and where they would appear so quickly? The best story in the collection, one of Blish's classic stories.
• Down the River -- Mack Reynolds
  It might be fun to imagine a galactic empire ruled by humans, but what if we were a subject race? Mack Reynolds, with all his customary subtleness, writes about the day Earth finds out it's part of a vast galactic empire...
• The Bounty Hunter -- Avram Davidson
  On a colony world, the inhabitants of the domed cities greatly envy the simple lifes of the woodsmen, hunting the vermin that might otherwise become a plague.. Somewhat of a minor Davidson this with a simple twist ending not up to his usual standards
• Not Yet the End -- Fredric Brown
  Fredric Brown is best known for his humorous, O. Henry type stories. This is another example which tells what happens when aliens looking for a sutable slave race land on earth...
• Tonight the Stars Revolt! -- Gardner F. Fox
  Gardner Fox may these days be best known for his work for DC Comics, both in the Golden and Silver Age of comics, but he also wrote a lot of pulp science fiction. This is a typical example, of a semi-barbaric empire where science is all but forgotten, reduced to a sort of parlour magic.
• Final Encounter -- Harry Harrison
  Humanity hhad conquered and explored almost the whole of the Galaxy without ever encountering aliens --until now?
• Lord of a Thousand Suns -- Poul Anderson
  On the home world of a race that had ruled the galaxy but died out a million years ago, one man is possessed by a genie.
• Big Ancestor -- F. L. Wallace
  Humanity was the only intelligent race in the Galaxy to exist in such bewildering numbers, on planets that could've had no contact with each other. there must've been a common ancestor somewhere, but it might not be what you'd expect it to be...
• The Interlopers -- Roger Dee
  When humanity finally managed to reach other solar systems, they found the Galaxy was teeming with hundreds of thousands of alien races, all ruled over by the T'sai. And now it's up to one ship of colonists to prove humanity's worth to them. Roger Dee is only a minor science fiction writer, but this story is perfect in its adherence to the Campbellian idea of humans as the superior being. Other races may be more powerful, wiser, older, but good old human gumption and spirit will lick them any time.

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