A few weeks ago I wrote about one of the books I got in my first order from the Science Fiction Book Club. This was another, and it had just as big an impact on me as Conklin's Omnibus of Science Fiction. All you have to to is look at the stories that are included to see why. Here they are: "Blowups Happen" by Robert A. Heinlein, "Hindsight" by Jack Williamson, "Vault Of The Beast" by A. E. van Vogt, "The Exalted" by L. Sprague De Camp, "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov, "When The Bough Breaks" by Lewis Padgett, "Clash By Night" by Lawrence O'Donnell, "Invariant" by John R. Pierce, "First Contact" by Murray Leinster, "Meihem In Ce Klasrum" by Dolton Edwards, "Hobbyist" by Eric Frank Russell, "E For Effort" by T. L. Sherred, "Child's Play" by William Tenn, "Thunder And Roses" by Theodore Sturgeon, "Late Night Final" by Eric Frank Russell", "Cold War" by Kris Neville, "Eternity Lost" by Clifford D. Simak, "The Witches Of Karres" by James H. Schmitz, "Over The Top" by Lester del Rey, "Meteor" by William T. Powers, "Last Enemy" by H. Beam Piper, "Historical Note" by Murray Leinster, and "Protected Species" by H. B. Fyfe.
It's a book full of classics. My favorite might or might not surprise you. It's the Sherred story, one I've read again and again, and always with pleasure. One of my very favorite time-travel stories. "Blowups Happen" was one of the first (maybe the first) stories about a nuclear reactor, written before such things existed. "Vault of the Beast" is one of those Van Vogt stories that's hard to describe but fun to read, totally implausible, but who cares? Asimov's "Nightfall" is the one about the stars coming out. Tenn's "Child's Play" is about the build-a-man kit. Simak's "Eternity Lost" is about immortality and the serum that provides it -- for a few. You might see the twist ending coming, but I didn't when I first read it. Hey, I was just a kid.
And there's so much more, but there's really no need for me to go on. You probably remember some of these as well or better than I do. Was "Thunder and Roses" the first story to predict the CD? I remember something in there that sure seemed like it, but it's been so long since I read the story that I need to read it again. I might be recalling a different story entirely, or I might have made the whole thing up. Anyway, this is a great anthology, and every story is highly readable and worth reading. It's a classic anthology in the SF field.
At some point Judith Merril's anthologies originated in hardback, but they were reprinted by Dell, where the series started. This one is typical in that Merril didn't confine herself to looking for stories in the usual suspects and in fact didn't confine herself to fiction. A John W. Campbell editorial and a newspaper article are included.
I read a lot of these stories when they were first published, and it's surprising how much of them I remembered when I started rereading them. Some of them seem just as fresh now as they did 50-something years ago, though of course some are quite dated. I'm pretty sure Jack Finney couldn't get away with "The Other Wife" now, though in 1960 it was published in The Saturday Evening Post, which in those days must have sold well into the millions of copies. Time changes everything.
"Make a Prison" is, I believe, Lawrence Block's only SF story. It's short and clever, but it has a point to make. So do a lot of these stories, and I suspect many of you are familiar with them. "Flowers for Algernon," for example, and "The Man Who Lost the Sea." I'm a Clifford D. Simak fan, so of course I liked "A Death in the House," which is a bit different from some of his work, but still the same in others. And Leiber's "Mariana" is another good one. Well, they're all good.
And then there are Merril's introductions to the stories, which are distinguished by the strength of her animus for Kingsley Amis, whose New Maps of Hell had recently been published. She makes many catty remarks about him as she goes along.
Copies of the book are available cheap from the usual Internet sources if you want to read some of the good old stuff.
CONTENTS: “Introduction” by Judith Merril;
“The Handler” by Damon Knight (1960);
“The Other Wife” by Jack Finney (1960);
“No Fire Burns” by Avram Davidson (1959);
“No, No, Not Rogov!” by Cordwainer Smith (1958);
“Shoreline at Sunset” by Ray Bradbury (1959); “The Dreamsman” by Gordon R. Dickson (1959);
“Multum in Parvo” by Jack Sharkey (1959);
“Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes (1959);
“’What Do You Mean...Human?’” by John W. Campbell, Jr. (1959);
“Sierra Sam” by Ralph Dighton (1960);
“A Death in the House” by Clifford D. Simak (1959);
“Mariana” by Fritz Leiber (1960);
“An Inquiry Concerning the Curvature of the Earth’s Surface” by Roger Price (1958);
“Day at the Beach” by Carol Emshwiller (1959);
“Hot Argument” by Randall Garrett (1959);
“What the Left Hand Was Doing” by Darrel T. Langart (1960);
“The Sound-Sweep” by J. G. Ballard (1960);
“Plenitude” by Will Worthington (1959);
“The Man Who Lost the Sea” by Theodore Sturgeon (1959);
“Make a Prison” by Lawrence Block (1958);
“What Now, Little Man?” by Mark Clifton (1959);
“Me” by Hilbert Schenck, Jr. (1959);
“The Year’s S-F: A Summary and Honorable Mentions” by Judith Merril.
