Island of Fear and Other Science Fiction Stories
Reviewed date: 2025 Apr 18
166 pages
I'd never heard of William Sambrot before I got this book in a big box of books from eBay. These are good stories. They are near-future stories, mostly written in the 1950s and 1960s and dealing with Cold War themes. Sambrot has an excellent grasp of what a short story should be: an interesting hook, a bit of story, and a clever twist at the end. Even if we can see the twist coming—and I usually could—it's nonetheless satisfying. I read this book in a single day, in two sittings.
Space Secret
The first automated mission to photograph the far side of the moon brings back tapes of an advanced civilization—but then somebody switched the tapes to remove the evidence. In a twist, that somebody is the narrator, who is a member of that civilization.
Control Somnambule
The first “Operation Moonshot” goes perfectly up until the spacecraft vanishes for six hours and then reappears. Captain Paul Davenport recalls nothing. Under hypnosis he recounts being captured and examined by unknown aliens. A close examination of Davenport’s body reveals the aliens removed his appendix, which had been infected. Also, he’s been “tagged.”
A Distant Shrine
A Soviet mission to Mars finds a small human population, complete with agriculture, churches, and a shrine commemorating the most common earth animal. The rat. And an inscription in Middle Low German: “Hameln, 1284 A.D.” They are the descendants of the children spirited off by the Pied Piper, who was an extra-terrestrial.
Island of Fear
Kyle Elliot peers over a great wall on a remote Greek island and sees an exquisite stone statue of a woman and child. He questions the locals, who are reluctant to discuss it. All he can get out of them is that 1) the wall has always been there, and 2) it's owned by the Gordons. An English family, Kyle surmises. Desperate to get a closer look and perhaps buy the statue, he persuades a young boy to row him around to the far side of the island where he can get inside the wall and approach the statue. Too late he discovers what the wall was built to imprison: the Gorgons—Medusa’s sisters.
Creature of the Snows
After two full months in the high Himalayas, photojournalist Ed McKale comes face to face with a yeti. Face to face with an eight-foot-tall, perfectly humanoid creature covered in white fur. And looks into its blue eyes. Sees the savage intelligence. And backs away, with no photographs, no proof but his memories.
Nine Days to Die
Joe Vitali, truck driver and vegetable delivery man, receives a lethal dose of radiation when a disposal truck from a nearby government research lab sprays him with radioactive dust. It takes him nine days to die. The narrator tries to convince his wife to allow a special autopsy that may help devise treatments for future radiation victims, but Mrs. Vitali is reluctant. In the end she agrees, so that Joe's death will not have been in vain.
The Secret of the Terrible Titans
A special investigative report commissioned by Ocean College determines that the team of seven-foot-tall, three-hundred-pound albino athletes who are winning every game for Pacific Underwater College are in truth—yeti. And better still: the investigator is headed to the Himalayas to procure a team of yeti for Ocean College.
Invasion
A view from the strategic bomber sent to deliver a nuclear knockout punch to the Soviet Union in retaliation for an invasion of West Germany. The bomber, named Snapdragon, gets deep into Soviet airspace before being recalled; the Soviet premier has capitulated at the last possible moment and begun withdrawing his troops from West Germany.
Report to the People
Don Masterson approaches his old friend Jerry Shipley, a publicist, with photograph proof of an advanced alien civilization on Mars, and further evidence that the Martians have infiltrated the highest levels of earth’s institutions to keep their existence secret. Jerry agrees to publish the photos—but he burns them. Jerry is a Martian. This is the same plot and the same plot twist as Space Secret.
Deadly Decision
Jim Henderson, in a bunker in a lonely missile silo complex in the remote arctic, debates whether to flip the switch and push the button that will launch the Big Punch. The retaliatory fifty-megaton lithium-cobalt doomsday bomb that will rain radioactive dust and destroy all life on earth. The all clear signal, which comes every three hours without fail, is two hours overdue, but Jim can’t bring himself to push the button. In the end he is proven right: it was a solar flare that knocked out communication. There is no war.
Jim was chosen specifically because his psychological profile indicated he would evaluate all the facts, determine that he should launch the missile—and still not have the heart to do it. The Big Punch was never meant to be used, and Jim Henderson is part of the safeguard to ensure it never will be.
The Man Who Knew
After an accident during the war, Neil Sheldon knows. He knows when a woman is willing, and in his dreams he seeks them out, approaching them in the night, seducing them. And every morning he realizes it was no dream. He desperately wants to sleep without dreaming, to get a real night’s sleep, but still he always knows, and in his dreams he always goes to them.
Cathartic
A siliceous life form crashes into a planet, absorbs silicon, grows into a massive mountain that destabilizes the planet. The planet wobbles, oceans slosh over and flood continents, and the siliceous life form breaks apart and seeds the planet with new, abundant life.
The Second Experiment
Dr. Andrew MacPhee returns from his trip to Venus and reveals a startling truth. Venus is a new Eden, a paradise populated by a peaceful people who know no sin—God's second experiment after the failure on Earth. The universe belongs to Venus. Earth, meanwhile, is doomed to die in atomic fury when China develops an H-bomb and demands her fair share of the world’s resources. The nations will respond in the only way they know: violent force.
A Son of Eve
A young islander boy stays behind on the atoll because, like Eve in the garden, his curiosity gets the better of him. He wants to see the great power that the Americans say they must test. He sees it. From nearly ground zero. And he is punished for his sin: blind, hairless, shriveled, bleeding. He is punished for daring to look at God.