The stories themselves deal with elements of the movie, specifically Robbie the Robot and the film’s redressing of Shakespeare’s The Tempest in space gear. There are robot stories as well as plenty about alien technology and superior cultures. Michael Morcock’s "Forbearing Planet" is great fun, satirizing the movie with his main character, Prospero Pigeon, and his mechanical sidekick, Robert Robot. (Walter Pigeon played the Prospero character, Dr. Morbius, in the film.) Stephen Baxter’s "Dreamers’ Lake" deals with the possibility of alien sentience in algae and takes a look at scientists scrambling to get what little data they can before the sky falls in (and in this case it’s a planetoid that is fated to crash into an alien world).

Forbidden Planets is a rich collection of intelligent fiction and science speculation. Its stories provide fodder for juicy debate and curious conjecture. Frankly, I haven’t read science fiction this good in a number of years. Forbidden Planets is a worthy tribute to the first thought-provoking science fiction film with intellectual depth, of similar name, Forbidden Planet.