The Case Against Tomorrow by Frederik Pohl

I've been slowly working my way through this short story collection since some time last year. I like short stories but I don't read many of them. I have a tendency to focus on longer media. I also really enjoy old science fiction. For my purposes, old means anything published before 1980. Some of the best science fiction is in the short story format so a collection of old science fiction short stories is like cat nip.

The Case Against Tomorrow is a collection of six stories. As in any collection, some are better than others, but all of these are worth a read. As the collection title suggests, most of these stories deal with some sort of worrying modern trend that Pohl is examining. Part of the fun is looking at how some of these ideas played out.

• "The Midas Plague" - this is all about the flaws of a consumer driven economy. When the wealth of the nation is driven by the production and consumption of consumer goods it'll only be the truly wealthy that aren't forced to consume.
• "The Census Takers" - is about population control, kind of, and about how to fairly manage over population, kind of. It's also kind of about what happens when someone is discovered in a society like that who is not registered or part of the system.
• "The Candle Lighter" - this is a strange story with a lot going on. I think the idea that spawned it was having to do with the concept of "mental illness." However, it also has martians and interspecies relations. When I first read it, the ending absolutely floored me.
• "The Celebrated No-Hit Inning" - to my mind this is the weakest of the six, but that's probably because I'm not any kind of professional sports fan. This story plays with time travel but only as a plot device. The main thrust of the story is how contentious and rules lawyering baseball was apparently becoming in the late 50's.
• "Wapshot's Demon" - this is a relatively short little tale playing with the ideas outlined in Maxwell's Demon, but with molecules of information instead of air.
• "My Lady Green Sleeves" - this is the longest story of collection and one of the most troubling. Pohl was writing in the late 50's and he's examining the idea of segregation, but by using a social caste construct instead of race or religion. He seems to be suggesting that it is human nature to tend towards segregated groups. Like any science fiction, the idea is flawed, but it is worth pondering some of his observations about human nature, even if I don't think his conclusion is inevitable.

I think my favorite story of the group was either "The Midas Plague" or the "The Census Takers" followed closely by "The Candle Lighter." "Wapshot's Demon" is fun too.