Out Of Bounds

Out of Bounds was written by Judith Merril and published in 1960.  Ms. Merril was Frederick Pohl's first wife, an "Anthologist" who edited the "Year's Best S-F" series in the 60s, and creator of the world's largest sci-fi library (in Toronto,Canada.)  She is a highly regarded woman writer in the male dominated field of sci-fi.  Out of Bounds contains 6 sci-fi short stories (including the mutant classic "THAT ONLY A MOTHER"), and one creepy gothic horror story (written with Algis Budrys) that takes place in Dutchess County, New York.  She writes about the military with authority, and voices her concerns about human connections and communication with aplomb; it's a pretty impressive collection of readable stuff....  Here's a sample of the text, from her telepathy (mind-reading) tale "Connection Completed":

     "A man lives all his life inside the wall of his own skull, making words into sentences, moving muscles to form gestures, so that he can make his existence and purposes known to others; and in the same way, absorbing his perceptions of the people and things around him, trying to interpret as best he can, so as to understand some part of their meaning for himself.  But he never gets outside the bony barriers of his own head, or past the hardening defenses of others.  For every human being, the word or the gesture has some slightly different meaning.  No two people ever meet completely without some slight or great distortion of intent or understanding, occurring in the jangled complexity of living cells that make up the expressive and interpretive mechanisms of the man."



Here's a video clip about Judith Merril:

And here's another clip from an annoying Canadian T.V. interview, Ms. Merril is quite interesting, though: