The World Treasury of Science Fiction

by David G. Hartwell (Editor, Contributor), Clifton Fadiman (Contributor), Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Contributor)

Table of contents

Introduction 1988 essay by David G. Hartwell
Harrison Bergeron 1961 story by Kurt Vonnegut Jr
Forgetfulness 1937 story by John W. Campbell Jr
Special Flight 1939 story by John Berryman
Chronopolis 1960 story by J.G. Ballard
Triceratops 1974 story by Kono Tensei
The Man Who Lost the Sea 1959 story by Theodore Sturgeon
On the Inside Track 1986 story by Karl Michael Armer
The Golem 1983 story by Avram Davidson
The New Prehistory 1972 story by René Rebetez-Cortes
A Meeting With Medusa 1972 novella by Arthur C. Clark
The Valley of Echoes 1973 story by Gérard Klein
The Fifth Head of Cerberus 1972 novella by Gene Wolfe
The Chaste Planet 1983 story by John Updike
The Blind Pilot 1960 story by Nathalie-Charles Henneberg
The Men Who Murdered Mohammed 1958 story by Alfred Bester
Pairpuppets 1974 story by Manuel van Loggem
Two Dooms 1958 story by C.M. Kornbluth
The Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon 1977 story by Stanislaw Lem
The Green Hills of Earth 1947 story by Robert A. Heinlein
Ghost V 1957 story by Robert Sheckley
The Phantom of Kansas 1976 story by John Varley
Captain Nemo's Last Stand 1973 story by Josef Nesvadba
Inconstant Moon 1971 story by Larry Niven
The Gold at the Starbow's End 1971 story by Frederik Pohl
A Sign In Space 1968 story by Italo Calvino
The Spiral 1968 story by Italo Calvino
The Dead Past 1956 story by Isaac Asimov
The Lens 1977 story by Annemarie van Ewyck
The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast 1949 story by Theodore Sturgeon
Zero Hour 1947 story by Ray Bradbury
Nine Lives 1969 story by Ursula K. LeGuin
The Muse 1964 story by Anthony Burgess
The Public Hating 1955 story by Steve Allen
Poor Superman 1951 story by Fritz Leiber
Angouleme 1974 story by Thomas M. Disch
Stranger Station 1956 story by Damon Knight
The Dead Fish 1955 story by Boris Vian
I Was the First to Find You 1977 story by Kirill Bulychev
The Lineman 1957 novella by Walter M. Miller Jr
Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius 1962 story by Jorge Luís Borges
Codemus 1968 story by Tor Age Bringsvaerd
A Kind if Artistry 1962 story by Brian Aldiss
Second Variety 1953 story by Philip K. Dick
Weihnachtsabend 1972 story by Keith Roberts
I Do Not Love Thee, Doctor Fell 1955 story by Robert Bloch
Aye, & Gomorrah... 1967 story by Samuel R. Delany
How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface 1977 story by Stanislaw Lem
Nobody's Home 1972 story by Joanna Russ
Party Line 1973 story by Gérard Klein
The Proud Robot 1943 story by Lewis Padgett
Vintage Season 1946 story by Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore
The Way to Amalteia 1984 novella by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Science Fiction Fantasy, Collections, Fantasy

1112 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

David Geddes Hartwell was an American editor of science fiction and fantasy. He worked for Signet (1971-1973), Berkley Putnam (1973-1978), Pocket (where he founded the Timescape imprint, 1978-1983, and created the Pocket Books Star Trek publishing line), and Tor (where he spearheaded Tor's Canadian publishing initiative, and was also influential in bringing many Australian writers to the US market, 1984-date), and has published numerous anthologies. He chaired the board of directors of the World Fantasy Convention and, with Gordon Van Gelder, was the administrator of the Philip K. Dick Award. He held a Ph.D. in comparative medieval literature.

He lived in Pleasantville, New York with his wife Kathryn Cramer and their two children.

Reviews

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the best science fiction anthology that I have seen.

Its attractions are many.

1. The Introduction by David Hartwell

In his Introduction, Hartwell presents an overview history of science fiction writing, starting in 1929 with Hugo Gernsback’s coinage of the term from a previous term, “scientific romance”. In the first issue of Amazing Stories, he defined it as “charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision.”

Most of the action in the 1930s occurred in the U.S., but the World War pretty much put the movement on hold. During the war, however, Joseph W. Campbell became the new leader of American SF, and spent the war years developing young writers, creating what some now call the Golden Age of SF. When the war ended in the mid-1940s American SF was ready to boom again, under the leadership of Campbell and his Astounding Stories magazine.

Hartwell then begins to weave in the story of how American SF influenced (or didn’t influence) the development of foreign SF in various parts of the world, and how it was accepted (or not) both in the U.S. and elsewhere, as “real literature”. It’s a pretty interesting essay, though only seven pages long, and highlights both the similarities and the differences between American SF and that of other countries.

Hartwell also mentions the Futurians, a group of New York SF “fans turned writers”. Included in this group were such well-known future authors as Asimov, Damon Knight, James Blish, Frederick Pohl, and Cyril M. Kornbluth. Of this group he says, “Starting as members of an idealistic teenage fan club, they have carried through their careers definite leftist leanings and a deep utopian optimism.”

Whether the details of Hartwell’s narrative are really verifiable, I have no idea. Obviously when one is writing about literary history, personal interpretation comes into play. I did feel that the story Hartwell told was a darn good one, and I’m sure I’ll come back to it on occasion.


2. The Introductions to the stories

Each story in the volume is prefaced with its own ~200 word introduction. These are presumably by Hartwell, and generally say something about the author, the author’s most well-known writings, perhaps a few words about the SF tradition of the author’s country (for foreign authors), and in some cases remarks either about the story itself, or about a comparison of the story with another in the book.

I’ll give a couple examples, though they can’t really indicate the wide range of information types that Hartwell includes in the set.

For Isaac Asimov’s story “The Dead Past”:

Isaac Asimov is a giant of science fiction, the only Futurian who fit into the Campbell mold and the most popular writer of them all. While Pohl, Kornbluth, Knight, and Blish did not break out until the advent of new editorial philosophies and new audiences in the 1950s, Asimov was one of the great names of the 1940s (when it was Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard, Van Vogt and Asimov who were the “big four” most popular writers in Campbell’s stable). In the 1940s Asimov wrote his classic robot stories, later collected in I, Robot, and the Foundation stories, later The Foundation Trilogy, and, of course, his famous story “Nightfall”, about a distant planet upon which night and darkness come only once in thousands of years. But it was in the 1950s that Asimov reached the height of his powers, in a series of novels culminating in The Caves of Steel, The End of Eternity, and The Naked Sun, and in many of the finest stories of the decade – the decade of Heinlein and Bradbury, Asimov and Clarke. “The Dead Past” is one of Asimov’s best from any decade, a serious investigation, in specific human terms, of the meaning of science and technology with a psychological depth uncharacteristic of its contemporaries.

Now, in this day of Wikipedia, one would perhaps question why this kind of information needs to be presented. Of course Wiki didn’t exist when the book was published. But even today, Wiki contains no articles on a few of the authors represented here. So here’s Hartwell’s intro for one of those.

For Annemarie Van Ewyck’s story “The Lens”:

It is interesting to contrast Van Ewyck’s story with Van Loggem’s; while the latter reflects the mood, tone, and concerns of primarily 1950s American SF, “The Lens” seems more in tune with Anglo-American post-New Wave works. It is darker, more heterogeneous in its influences (here a touch of Bradbury or Zelazny, there a touch of Tiptree or Sturgeon). And “The Lens”, translated from the Dutch by its author, is told in the first person rather the conventional third. The author is an active member of World SF, an international body, and she is a participant in fan activities internationally. This story is one of a small but growing body of works in many languages that incorporate a wide variety of English-language SF influences.

Not earth shaking information, but enough to spur some readers’ interests in an author perhaps.

At any rate, I always like reading stuff like this. A little non-fiction to connect the fiction with reality, as it were.

3. Variety: temporal, spatial and otherwise

Time span covered
The earliest story in the collection is John W. Campbell’s Forgetfulness, from 1937. The latest is Karl Michael Armer’s On the Inside Track, from 1986. So just about fifty years of SF are represented.

By decades: 1930s, 2; 1940s, 5; 1950s, 13; 1960s, 10; 1970s, 18; 1980s, 4. Fifty-two stories, spread out nicely over the different periods of SF. Fewer stories than might be really representative pre-1950, but many earlier anthologies would have concentrated, by necessity, on these early days.

Length
The shortest story is The Chaste Planet, the only SF story ever written by John Updike, all of four pages long; the longest, at 60 pages, is The Way To Amalteia, by the Russian brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The other longer offerings, including the latter, have been reserved for many of the best SF writers represented in the collection: Arthur C. Clarke, Gene Wolfe, C.M. Kornbluth, Frederick Pohl, Asimov, Walter M. Miller Jr. (of A Canticle for Leibowitz fame), Philip K. Dick, and the Henry Kuttner/C.L. Moore tandem.

Writers represented
In addition to those just mentioned, other well-known SF writers represented in the collection include Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, Alfred Bester, Damon Knight, and Ray Bradbury.

But this is not a collection of stories by all the best-known SF writers; nor are all the writers here well-known, at least to me. The main reason for this is probably the “World” in the book’s title. 23 of the stories are written by non-American writers, and even removing the five by British writers still leaves over a third of the stories by non-English language authors. This is one of the charms of the book. These eighteen stories are written by writers from eleven different countries around the world. It is the introductions written for these stories that are particularly interesting for an American reader.

For example, the intro to the long story by the Strugatsky brothers raves about the work of these Soviet writers, urgently drove me to Wiki to find out more, and thereby introduced me to their series of Noon Universe books (which I found, from the description on Wiki, to be incredibly similar to the idea of a Stage 3 species of the Big History narrative, recently documented here, their connection to the 1979 film Stalker (which inspired the 1995 dark ambient album of that name, which I obtained several months ago) … my goodness, what webs!

There are also a few writers represented that are known very little, if at all, for SF writing. These include a total of six stories by John Updike (noted above), Italo Calvino (two), Steve Allen (known for everything but his writing of any type), Boris Vian (a French Polymath), and Jorge Luis Borges. Some or all of these selections could be argued with; but at a total page count of about 50, we’re not talking about a major segment of the book in any case. Again, the introductions to these stories take a stab at justifying their inclusion, usually with some success.


On the other hand …

There are only five stories here attributed to female writers. One is the Henry Kuttner/Catherine L. Moore collaboration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._L._Mo... one is by Ursula Le Guin, the writer who brought female S.F. out of the darkness around 1970 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K... another is by Joana Russ, an American academic and writer of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_R... a story by Nathalie-Charles Henneberg, a French writer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathalie... and finally the story by Annemarie Van Ewyck (see its Introduction quoted above).

No Marion Zimmer Bradley? No Anne McCaffrey? These are names that I could come up with rather easily. Too bad that female writers weren’t represented a bit better.

There are also what I consider to be several classic SF writers not represented here: Clifford Simak, Anthony Boucher, Murray Leinster, L Sprague de Camp, Lester del Rey, and to top them all, A.E. van Vogt. Okay, these names have been well-anthologized many times. And there’s no doubt that attempting to come up with the “perfect” list of authors (much less stories) for a book like this is an impossible task.

So admitting that these short-comings could be viewed as minor, I’ll conclude as I started, by saying that this is certainly the best S.F. anthology I’m acquainted with.



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: Far from the Madding Crowd
Next review: Lonesome Dove
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Previous library review: Genius in Disguise Harold Ross & The New Yorker
Next library review: Parkinson's Law

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

God, where to begin? My parents sent me and my sister this book in a care-package during a summer music program in 1990, and I don't know that I've ever loved a book more. If I could, I'd give this one six stars; maybe seven.

Part of what makes this book so amazing is that this is where I first discovered so many of my favorite authors: Larry Niven, John Varley, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Heinlein (okay, he's not a favorite, but I think this book has one of his best). And even the writers I've never sought out afterward have stories in this collection that I still read over and over again: "The Gold at the Starbow's End", "Chronopolis", "The Fifth Head of Cerebus" and "Vintage Season" (my personal favorite). I don't know if there's any ONE book I would choose to have with me on a deserted island (I'd need at least, say, sixteen or so) but this one would keep me happy for a good long while.

[StarMan]

Robots, time travel, starships, hardy adventurers, lunar mishaps, aliens, and more. This book pretty much includes any common SF element you can think of.

VERDICT: Just over 3 stars. I expect that this collection could easily be ~4 stars for many SF readers.

52 stories, over 1,100 pages. Four were tales I'd previously read in other anthologies. Overall, an average or slightly better collection than usual, and with a decent range of non-American authors included. As always with these older collections, some stories felt dated, while others stood the test of time better.

Most stories in this anthology were 2.0 to 3.5 stars for me. Some were a wee bit silly, contrived, or nonsensical (or more fantasy than SF)--but there were only a handful I'd give fewer than 2 stars.

Fortunately, some stories were exceptions to the cigarette-smoking, whiskey-drinking, male-dominated futures of most 1940s to 1970s SF, and there were 4 or 5 female authors represented. And there was even a tale that sort of predicts cell phone-addicted humans (aka 'cell phone zombies.')

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

As good a collection of fine sf as you are likely to find, there are very few clunkers here. It is, however, a product of a different era of science fiction and the preponderance of white, male, primarily European voices is a bit of a shock from the perspective of current publishing. Since the most recent story was published in 1986 and the earliest, by the venerable John W. Campbell, in 1937 this is not surprising but it does leave some of the stories and styles feeling quite dated. A World Treasury published now would, I think, be quite different in tone and content but there is no reason that the selection of stories could not be just as good.

Best reads in the collection, in no particular order.

Chronopolis, J.G. Ballard
Stranger Station, Damon Knight
The Phantom of Kansas, John Varley
Inconstant Moon, Larry Niven
The Spiral, Italo Calvino
Angouleme, Thomas Disch
The Hurkle is a Happy Beast, Theodore Sturgeon

[Elizabeth Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a LOT of short story collections, and I think the reason why is that I'm hoping that SOME day I'll find a collection as good as this one. Reading it always brings me back to music camp, where my Mom sent a copy in a care package for my sister and I. It was my first look at Kurt Vonnegut ("Harrison Bergeron") and Larry Niven ("Inconstant Moon") and John Varley ("The Phantom of Kansas") and Frederik Pohl ("The Gold At the Starbow's End") and way too many more to mention, all of them wonderful. (Aww, just looking through the contents I spotted Lewis Padgett's "The Proud Robot," that's a great one, I'll have to reread that one tonight...) Great great stuff, all of it.

[Ingrid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anthologies make it so the reader can check out authors they may not have read. This one was particularly large with 51 major authors from several decades of Sci Fi. Not one to read while riding public transportation unless you also need a weapon, LOL.

[Chan Fry · Rating 3 out of 5]

(2.69 of 5 — average rating of 52 stories)

This collection of 52 short stories and novellas spanning six decades of sci-fi was compiled in 1989; it includes authors from around the world as well as more renowned award-winning authors like Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. Though I was disappointed in many of the stories (both older and newer), enough of them were worth reading that I’m glad I picked up this anthology for 50 cents at a library sale.

I have published a longer review, complete with mini-reviews of each story, on my website.

[Dan Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

With Science fiction this dated, you do have to keep reminding yourself of the time period it was written. Some of these entries were shockingly prescient. Some were wildly off base. Overall I thought this was OK, but it did have a blandness in the content and writing style that maybe just stems from the age of the material.

Individual reviews follow:

Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut. C. Short and silly, incompetency themed. Everyone must be equal by handicapping the bright lights. 2/5
Forgetfulness, John W Campbell, Jn. Great tale of our space mission meeting aliens and feeling they’d become lax and old, having forgotten their ambitions. Only to discover they’d transcended those ambitions, and were so far beyond us they couldn’t explain themselves to us. 4/5.
Special Flight, John Berryman. 3/5. “The Expanse” of golden age sci-fi. Quaint. They gather at the water cooler. There’s a big container of milk being delivered. Everything was mechanical and nobody stayed in their chair because they had no electronics for control panels etc. relics of a simpler time.
Chronopolis, J.G.Ballard. 5/5. A world where timekeeping is illegal, after the world got obsessed with rigid time schedules and population blew up out of control. Very fair to both sides, the love of and importance of timekeeping compared to the freedom to live off the clock.
Triceratops, Kono Tensei. 3/5. Cute and short. Would’ve been a great children’s story but for the gory, entrails-soaked ending.
The man who lost the sea. Theodore Sturgeon. 4/5. Poetic and it really put me there in the scene, but oblique with a sort of scattered narrative viewpoint from a dying man.
Karl Michel Almer, on the inside track. 4/5
An old curmudgeon retired by a lakeside resort is possessed by an alien mind to get some business transacted on earth. They become friends. It’s an odd take on an odd-couple style story. Charmingly written, minimalist.
Avram Davidson, The Golem. 2/5. Mercifully short little snip of a story where an android walks into a Jewish suburb and gets bonked in the head and turned into a servant “golem” by an elderly couple. A comedy.
Rene Tebetez-Cortes, The New Prehistory. 5/5. Body horror, cosmic horror and a metaphor for losing yourself in the groupthink of society. Great.
Arthur C Clarke, A Meeting With Medusa. 4/5.
Pulpy space shuttle exploration drama on Jupiter, with a trans-humanist twist at the end. Strong action, strong philosophy. Classic sci-fi.
Gerard Klein, The Valley of Echoes. 4/5. Excellent tragedy of an empty universe that gives a hint of hope in the valley of echoes, non-mineral fossils of sound that’s wiped away by enthusiasm. Tragic.
The fifth head of Cerberus, Gene Wolfe. 5/5.
Great weird tale of an alien planet and a very specialized house of ill repute. Layered, character driven philosophy heavy sci-fi. Hugely enjoyable.
John Updike, the chaste planet. 3/5. Cute idea about lost innocence when humans discover a sexless alien species obsessed with music but having only rudimentary musical talents.
The Blind Pilot. 3/3, Nathalie+Charles Henneberg. A box with an alien siren, ultrasonic music draws the pawn broker to his death, the mutant brother brings the police to the scene to eliminate the monster. Interesting but too flowery. The authors went on too long about gems and lights and space sights.
The men who murdered Mohammed, Alfred Bester. 5/5. A quick, fun sci-fi murder mystery ghost story. Weird in a Douglas Adam’s style.
Manuel Van Loggem, Pairpuppets. 4/5. Interesting look at sexual mores and styles, how one shifts to another over time and with an excellent twist ending.
C.M. Cornbluth. Two Dooms. 2/5. A fun drug trip vision (or time travel) of the future if the USA didn’t invent the nuclear bomb and then somehow lost ww2. Pretty racially ignorant, lots of bad caricature.
Tale of the computer that fought a dragon. Stanislaw Lem. 3/5. I’d read this short farce years ago. It’s cute and fun but a bit too flip for me.
The Green Hills of Earth. Robert A Heinlein. 3/5. Hokey but in a fun way. Heinlein at his best is a hokey/jokey space hillbilly and this is right up his alley.
Robert Sheckley. Ghost V. 5/5, silly but fun and stuck the landing on a punchline.
John Varley. The phantom of Kansas. 2/5. I’ve already reviewed this one as part of The Persistence of Vision, it’s a whodunnit that’s obvious and illogical. And since it’s Varley it ends with weird sex stuff.
Josef Nesvadba. Captain Nemos Last Adventure. 3/5. A parody of the noble starship captain who goes on a long journey and finds that time dilation has changed his society dramatically.
Larry Niven, Inconsistent Moon. 4/5. Nova solar flare event, post apocalyptic story. Very well told, great attention to detail. Half the world wiped out overnight, what next?
Frederik Pohl, The Gold At Starbows End. 2/5.
Some great ideas but a real groaner of hippie philosophy, numerology etc. hard science fiction that roped in too much pseudoscience BS.
Italo Calvino, A Sign In Space. 5/5. Pure poetry about infinite space and the meaning of points of reference. Just a delight.
Italo Calvino. The Spiral. 4/5. Another (much better riff) on the idea of inferring the whole universe from a few data points. An immortal love story from the point of view of a mollusk with consciousness spanning evolutionary time.
Isaac Asimov, The Dead Past. 4/5 I enjoyed the hard sci-fi look at the fallout of a new technology, but didn’t like the typical assumed results. Though the last lines were gold. The past of 1 second ago is just the present on a slight lag.
Annemarie Van Ewyck, The Lens. 3/5. The author swanned around a bit too much about the ecstasy and roped in astrology at the end, but it was a great little adventure with the entire main plot as subtext to the protagonist’s journey.
Theodore Sturgeon, The Hurkle is a Happy Beast. 3/5. Cute and funny. The Dr Seuss apocalypse brought on by a happy space kitten.
Zero Hour, Ray Bradbury. 3/5. I’d read this one before, pretty decent alien invasion using secret messages to coerce children into building machines to usher in the end of their world. Innocence used as a beachhead for interplanetary invasion. It’s a fun idea.
Nine Lives, Ursula K Le Guin. 4/5. A slow burn, tightly written study of what it means to be an individual set on a mining operation in distant space.
Anthony Burgess, The Muse. 2/5. Just too trippy. I know this is the signature style of Burgess, but I don’t enjoy all the reality warping. Fundamentally the time travel misadventures seem like what would happen immediately to a traveler from another time.
Steve Allen, The Public Hating. 3/5. Allegory about the power of the mob. Rile people up enough to anger and find it a target and it’s a very powerful tool.
Fritz Lieber, Poor Superman. 2/5. Farce built around a sound central theme of charlatans tricking humanity into a false machine god like the wizard of Oz behind the curtain.
Thomas M Disch, Angouleme. 2/5. Kind-of a mashup of the movie Kids and Clockwork Orange. Modern dance studio rich kids on drugs set up a random murder to really make it as artists and then collectively wuss out.
Damon Knight, Stranger Station. 2/5. One man alone in a remote space station milking an enormous ineffable alien to keep humanity prosperous. Weird one man play in a small set. Decides to kill the alien by…hating it? And thus insures humanity will conquer space. Good writing on a bad premise.
Boris Vian, The Dead Fish. 3/5 A weird day in the life of (my impression only) post apocalyptic mutants scavenging a living in the industrial wasteland. Murder and suicide, et fini.
I Was The First To Find You, Kiril Bulychev. 3/5
Holy moly, that was a good story but the caricature who spoke in Ebonics was painful.
The lineman, Walter m miller Jr, 2/5. Old timey morality in space. No women on the moon because contraception doesn’t exist but space travel does. The casual racism, homophobia, the terrible accents. Just a directionless slog with empty subplots, a weird love interest who gets raped as an aside that has nothing to do with the plot. Former nun so she can be both whore and Madonna. Bechdel failure, at least there were two named female characters. Lots of moral philosophy, just way out of date and didn’t stand the test of time.
Jorge Luis Borges, Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. 3/5. A fun little brain tease about another reality encroaching on our own. Very hermetic, if you’ve played Mage The Ascension it’s a great campaign of taking over the underlying paradigm of reality.
Codemus, Tor Age Bringsvaerd. 4/5. Short tale about a computer intelligence that runs an efficient society with the help of Little Brother; basically a smartphone. So much of this scenario rings true today that it’s still a solid point.
Brian Aldiss, A Kind Of Artistry. 3/5. Very high concept. The space exploration part took a backseat to the strange marriage dynamic of the main characters. The wife was a caricature of the frigid shrew, the husband a martyr to the road.
Philip K Dick, Second Variety. 5/5. The inspiration for the movie “Screamers”. Obviously the ending twist was a bit telegraphed, but the protagonist got off a wry chuckle in the face of humanity’s end that was quite funny.
Keith Roberts, Weihnacht-Sabend. 3/5. Assumes you have a little German, or are cool with untranslated languages. The whole thing has a dream quality, and a haziness. The characters are stiff. The whole thing is two conspiracies bouncing off one another; the angel and devil. Vying for control of the protagonist.
Robert Bloch, I do not love thee, doctor Fell. 3/5. Quick, corny, ironic. The new craze, losing yourself to the hollow buzzwords of modernity. The twist was telegraphed but (and I don’t know if this was Blochs intent) I think he made the right choice in the end. The only doctor who knows how a new epidemic works? Seems like a good position to be in.
Samuel R Delany, Aye, and Gomorrah. 4/5. Complicated sexual mores / deviance relating to the genetically modified eunuchs who are capable of space travel. Interesting slice of life of a group trading their bodies for spending money.
Stanislaw Lem. How Erg the Self-Inducting slew a paleface. 2/5. From the Cyberiad. Well written but the children’s fable tone of the stony and the smugness weren’t fun. Very creative, generated a wide universe in a short span of pages.
Joanna Russ, Nobody’s Home. 2/5. A future where everyone is free to do whatever they want with minimal work and they keep the population small. Everyone lives a long time and being unique, special geniuses is the goal. A lady turns up and she’s , gasp! Plain and boring. The tragedy!
Party Line, Gerard Klein . 3/5. Time travel telephones himself. Two possible outcomes at a life crossroads, he’s tempted by the fun one and rolls the dice.
Lewis Padgett, The Proud Robot. 4/5. Silly and funny. I’m not the vein of the crosstime saloon.
Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore, Vintage Season. 5/5. Very nuanced , great characters. About time travel and the moral failings of a spectator society. People almost alien from the future who’ve lost all moral relation to the present. How would we seem to a Goth? A Roman? An Aztec? Morality changes over time, like fashion. Very well done.
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, The Way To Amalteia. 4/5. A much better grasp of physics and more credible advanced technology. Very like Special Flight, by John Berryman but much better done. Stands with Arthur c Clark’s appointment with Medusa for Jupiter exploration.

A fun book overall, golden age sci fiction with a hugely varied take on norms and mores in the future. Some were prescient, some far off the mark. The ones that beat stood the test of time were the ones dealing with humanity and its struggle in new situations.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This may be the best collection of science fiction I've yet to encounter. It includes not only a chronological range of classic sf stories and novellae by established writers from several countries, but also stories written by well-known authors not usually associated with the genre. All the stories are, in my opinion, good to excellent. I recommend this as a gift for friends who have never gotten interested in the genre.

[Ebenmaessiger · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Harrison Bergeron" (1961): 9
- Leave it to Vonnegut to complicate the classic, easily replicable libertarian anti-communalism sf of postwar America. In many ways, I'm sympathetic to complaints that we're reading too much into certain tropes -- esp. as they appear in the work of those producing for pulp-like environments -- of genre fiction, and especially so when it comes to near-future stories like these: both the premise of "equality" and the "logical" steps towards the (intentional or not) misapplication of that principle are just too easy for the on-the-clock writer to bypass. They're readymade for dystopia. The piece here: future world enforces equality (interestingly, it's not explicitly material [although, I'm sure if we were to extrapolate this world outwards, that would be implied], but instead focused on intelligence and personal advantage [strength, beauty, talent, etc.]) through intrusive measures (masks on the beautiful, brain blocks on the smart, etc.), until one Exquisite boy one day escapes and uses his advantages for himself, eventually being murdered for it, all while his parents watch on the television, not really sure of what they're watching in their enforced stupidity (although, funnily, I think the mother is introduced as just being this actually stupid?! haha come on). The story works, however, (in addition to just the prosaic beauty of V.'s prose) because Vonnegut out-thinks his template. He takes a chock-a-block script -- one that's simply begging for both an individualized ending and ideology -- and he underscores the ferocity of both systems at play here--at the excesses of the handicapped and the handicapper. What the Handicapper General is disrupting is not the natural human flowering and bonhomie and care for the commonweal inherent to any individualized flowering, but actually the drive to possess and dominate. AND, to complicate things even more, humanity's more benign, beautiful impulses are also contained within those very totalitarian impulses (as in Harrison's urge to dance, love, and make music). Good stuff. Oh, and that he happened to make him both 7 feet tall and 14 is just hilarious.

"Forgetfulness," by John W. Campbell (1938): 7.5
- Nothing too compelling in this early do-they-know-it’s-earth tale.

“Two Dooms,” by C. M. Kornbluth (1958): 7.25
- Well, you can’t say he didn’t stick to the bit. His remit here: present a dire depiction of defeated, occupied America. So he does. Our protagonist wanders through different geological expressions of said desiccation – desert, heartland, farming, city – as both he and the reader wait for the inevitable moment at which he’ll come across some semblance of urban civilization (even of the kind available only to the occupying powers). It never happens; it’s a vision of unremitting despondence, penury, and suffering, gradually ramping up and up in a way that verged right on the edge of laughably bleak (pulled off, only, by the deadpan style entered into for the presentation of the greatest depravities later in the story [ie the Race Scientist telling him, after he’s volunteered for a position as ‘lab assistant,’ that he’s to be dissected]. In the case of that endeavor, an unqualified success, and one that puts later Nazis-Win Alt Hists to shame (is that our metric?), even if that success nonetheless simultaneously relies upon an element that constitutes the weaknesses of the story: the jejeune simple-minded understanding of Axis evil and ideology. (Or, to wit, their history: to what end, other than the in-the-moment shock of it, the erasure of Hitler from the alternate history at work here? And how does that actually work within the time-traveling mechanisms within the story? I can’t really think of any other AltHists where the jonbar point is not a jonbar point – he leaves in ’44, but his future [a dream is it?] has history shifted from at least the late 20s? [if we’re to believe Goebbels ascendance and Hitler’s subordination (itself a queer supposition, esp. with the understanding of Kornbluth’s time, considering how much pop history placed in the ‘unique charisma’ of Hitler as reason for Machtergreifung! Hmm.)]) Regardless, as “story,” it’s lacking: the structure is a bit clunky, with the big jonbar explication coming whole-hog and out of nowhere, and the peyote-driven Indian mysticism parallel-worlding hokey even for its own time. And then, the implications of the whole thing (we GOTTA drop the bomb cause look what’ll happen otherwise! [we get other nods in this direction throughout for those paying attention, ie America loses millions trying to launch an amphibious invasion against Japan itself]), something I’m sure gets the majority of ilk spilled over this story, but one that doesn’t bother me much, again considering how these things go. As is, though, an interesting example of a type of inadvertent conservatism in genre work – an oft-ignored subgenre in contemporary criticism, given all the overt examples to choose from.

"Special Flight," by John Berryman (1939): 7
- In fine "engineer's fiction" form, a story wholly existing to allow one to narrate the speculative mechanics of crewing, flying, and navigating a spaceship. It's "hard" in that sense, which is basically a truer sense of the word than what passes now. But what's there to do with it? STORY: disaster on moon requires regular shuttle crew to make dangerous jaunt back to help, wherein they pass meteor field, technical problems, and crew doubts to save the day.

"Nine Lives," by Ursula K. Le Guin (1968): 8.5
- Having read little Le Guin, I'm nonetheless familiar with her themes and preoccupations. It's in the aether. And this story did not disappoint in living up to those expectations, either thematically or in terms of setting. Yet, what was surprising was just how well crafted it was otherwise-in terms of pacing, character, and brusque exploration of major themes. We have here a crash course in identity, sex, and gender ambiguity, all transposed through the guise of what is admittedly a fairly conventional sci-fi setup. [to that end, note the intros (very right) claim that this story "inverts trad. Doppelgänger tale, and explores how uncanny it is to NOT meet ourself everywhere we go]. And, maybe actually even worse than conventional, as the planet and mine really only served as a generic means to bring our characters together and damage them later. To that end, the denouement was weak and detracted from the Point/s Being Made on account of its roteness (even she seemed a bit bored with the whole thing by the end). Still, these quick reads of mine only accentuate the jump in quality from other stories to her, as evidenced in her often actual incisive human psychology ('do many individuals ruin potential for individuality’) and halfgood prosey flourishes scattered throughout.

"Vintage Season," by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore (1946): 9
- [after-the-fact review] potentially over-stays its welcome, but that's a tiddling complaint. strong, classic time-travel story, fit up with an overriding sense of strangeness, mild foreboding, and hits some emotional beats that land well, especially for a story of its era.

"The Men Who Murdered Mohammed," by Alfred Bester (1958): 8.25
- Bester's trademark bravura style — really quite unique for his time and field — is tamped down enough to work for me here, even if the central conceit plays off a bit shaggy.

“Angouleme,” by Thomas M. Disch (1971): 9
- If an example of the “realistic fiction of the future,” as described by this collection’s editors in their introduction, then Disch’s little what-if-Leopold-and-Loeb in a dystopia reflects that realism less in a representative slice-of-life narrative way than in its finely observed, subtly clued character study. Indeed, I struggle to see our prepubescent plotters as typical of any social cadre even in the future depicted here, although this doesn’t take away from the power Disch finds in illuminating the contours of this most plausible of futures — little noticeable technological change, “progressive” socio-cultural changes overlaying general socio-economic degeneration, shunting have nots onto a UBI-like “now-don’t-complain” program — through them. Disch employs a slightly overwrought, half strained, and half quite effective prose style that is probably the main source of lumping him in with the li-fi crowd—in addition to the decidedly degenerate and relatively low-stakes atmosphere of his work. The thing, though: it’s pretty good. Nonetheless, clearly suffers as a stand-alone, ie sure the cumulative effect of reading this in conjunction with the rest of 334 provides more generous view than getting it solo here. STORY: slightly off-kilter future with bored rich kids doing what bored rich kids do: planning to murk someone.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is far too much material in this anthology of 52 short stories to summarize even the high points and the low points adequately, so I'll just touch on a handful of each. First, however, it should be noted that this collection includes a significant number of translations into English, many of which are quite excellent. It also includes a few stories from unlikely sources (e.g., John Updike and Steve Allen), which would probably have been better left behind.

On the plus side, we have, in order of appearance:
• "Chronopolis" by J.G. Ballard, a dystopian story set in a future in which timepieces have been outlawed. This is reminiscent of Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451," but with a darker ending.
• "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" by Gene Wolf, in which the protagonist slowly unravels the horrific secrets of his family's past and his own origins.
• "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed" by Alfred Bester, a remarkably clever take on the time-travel trope.
• "Captain Nemo's Last Adventure" by Josef Nesvadba, a bit of a shaggy dog story of derring-do in which the toxically masculine title character is cut down to size by inexorable relativistic forces.
• "Codemus" by Tor Åge Bringsvaerd, written in 1968, is one of the most prescient pieces of sci-fi I've ever read. So relevant that I intend to share it with my middle school English students this coming school year.
• "The Way to Amalteia" by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky is a tautly rendered slow burn, a real page-turner in which the suspense surrounding the finale is expertly held in check until the very last pages.

On the other hand, some of the low points include:
• "The Chaste Planet" by John Updike is a flaccid vignette by a "serious" writer who seems to think that science fiction is the proper repository for weak, half-baked jokes filled with more ten-dollar words than anyone who's reading for pleasure actually wants to encounter.
• "The Green Hills of Earth," which is typical piffle from Robert A. Heinlein, delivered in his invariably smug style.
• "The Gold at the Starbow's End" by Frederik Pohl is based on an asinine premise that gives way to an asinine plot and ends with an asinine conclusion. The question here is how much disbelief the reader is capable of suspending.
• "The Lineman" by Walter M. Miller, Jr., is a noxious melange of toxic blue-collar masculinity, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and gang violence set on a colonized moon. Adding insult to injury, this story meanders aimlessly from beginning to end.
• "Nobody's Home" by Joanna Russ is an ostensibly feminist tale that ends up coming off as ludicrous as Heinlein's most clueless blatherings. This story cannot be taken seriously.

This only covers a fraction of the stories contained in this volume, and there is a great deal more to praise between its covers, as well as quite a few more near-disasters. On the whole, the good outweighs the bad by a significant margin, and anyone looking for an extended and variegated diversion is likely to find much to appreciate here.

[Shanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairly good mix of mostly 3-4 star stories. Of the 52 stories, I had previously read 9 from other anthologies. Good representation of authors across the globe.

1. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. “Harrison Bergeron” 1961 ***
2. John W. Campbell, Jr. “Forgetfulness” 1937 ***
3. John Berryman “Special Flight” 1939 ***
4. J. G. Ballard “Chronopolis” 1960 ****
5. Kono Tensei “Triceratops” 1974 ***
6. Theodore Sturgeon “The Man Who Lost the Sea” 1959 ****
7. Karl Michael Armer “On the Inside Track” 1986 ***
8. Avram Davidson “The Golem” 1983 ***
9. Rene Rebetez-Cortes “The New Prehistory” 1972 **
10. Arthur C. Clarke “A Meeting with Medusa” 1971 ****
11. Gerard Klein “The Valley of Echoes” 1959 ****
12. Gene Wolfe “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” 1972 ****
13. John Updike “ The Chaste Planet” 1983 ***
14. Nathalie-Charles Henneberg “The Blind Pilot” 1959 **
15. Alfred Bester “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed” 1958 ***
16. Manuel Van Loggem “Pairpuppets” 1974 ****
17. C. M. Kornbluth “Two Dooms” 1958 ****
18. Stanislaw Lem “Tale of the Computer that Fought a Dragon” 1977 **
19. Robert A. Heinlein “The Green Hills of Earth” 1947 **
20. Robert Sheckley “Ghost V” 1957 ****
21. John Varley “The Phantom of Kansas” 1976 ****
22. Josef Nesvadba “Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure” 1964 ****
23. Larry Niven “Inconstant Moon” 1971 ****
24. Frederick Pohl “The Gold at the Starbow’s End” 1971 ****
25. Italo Calvino “A Sign in Space” 1965 **
26. Italo Calvino “The Spiral” 1965 ***
27. Isaac Asimov “The Dead Past” 1956 ****
28. Annemarie Van Ewyck “The Lens” 1977 ****
29. Theodore Sturgeon “The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast” 1949 ***
30. Ray Bradbury “Zero Hour” 1947 ****
31. Ursula K. Le Guin “Nine Lives” 1968 ****
32. Anthony Burgess “The Muse” 1964 **
33. Steve Allen “The Public Hating” 1955 ***
34. Fritz Leiber “Poor Superman” 1951 **
35. Thomas M. Disch “Angouleme” 1974 **
36. Damon Knight “Stranger Station” 1956 ****
37. Boris Vian “The Dead Fish” 1955 *
38. Kirill Bulychev “I Was the First to Find You” 1977 *****
39. Walter M. Miller “The Lineman” 1957 *
40. Jorge Luis Borges “Tlon, Uqbar, OrbisTertius” 1940 **
41. Tor Age Bringsvaerd “Codemus” 1968 ****
42. Brian Aldiss “A Kind of Artistry” 1962 ***
43. Philip K. Dick “Second Variety” 1953 ****
44. Keith Roberts “Weihnachtsabend” 1972 **
45. Robert Bloch “I Do Not Love Thee, Doctor Fell” 1955 ***
46. Samuel R. Delany “Aye, and Gomorrah” 1967 ***
47. Stanislaw Lem “How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface” 1964 **
48. Joanna Russ “Nobody’s Home” 1972 **
49. George Klein “Party Line” 1973 ****
50. Lewis Padgett “The Proud Robot” 1943 **
51. Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore “Vintage Season” 1946 ***
52. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky “The Way to Amalteia” 1959 *

[Ed Rich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uneven and sometimes dated, but overall an interesting selection of SF.

1930s: 2 stories, avg 2.3
  Forgetfulness   John W. Campbell, Jr.   (1937)   2.5
  Special Flight   John Berryman   (1939)   2

1940s: 5 stories, avg 3.2
  The Proud Robot   Lewis Padgett   (1943)   2
  Vintage Season   Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore   (1946)   4.5
  The Green Hills of Earth   Robert A. Heilein   (1947)   2.5
  Zero Hour   Ray Bradbury   (1947)   4
  The Hurkle is a Happy Beast   Theodore Sturgeon   (1949)   3

1950s: 15 stories, avg 3.1
  Poor Superman   Fritz Leiber   (1951)   4
  Second Variety   Philip K. Dick   (1953)   4
  The Dead Fish   Boris Vian   (1955)   1.5
  The Golem   Avram Davidson   (1955)   2
  The Public Hating   Steve Allen   (1955)   3.5
  I do not Love Thee, Doctor Fell   Robert Bloch   (1955)   3
  Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius   Jorge Luis Borges   (1956)   4
  The Dead Past   Isaac Asimov   (1956)   2.5
  Stranger Station   Damon Knight   (1956)   2.5
  Ghost V   Robert Sheckley   (1957)   2.5
  The Lineman   Walter M. Miller, Jr.   (1957)   1.5
  The Men Who Murdered Mohammed   Alfred Bester   (1958)   4
  Two Dooms   C.M. Kornbluth   (1958)   3
  The Blind Pilot   Nathalie-Charles Henneberg   (1959)   3.5
  The Man Who Lost The Sea   Theodore Sturgeon   (1959)   4.5

1960s: 9 stories, avg 3.2
  Chronopolis   J.G. Ballard   (1960)   4
  Harrison Bergeron   Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.   (1961)   4.5
  A Kind of Artistry   Brian Aldiss   (1962)   3
  The Muse   Anthony Burgess   (1964)   4
  A Sign in Space   Italo Calvino   (1965)   2
  The Spiral   Italo Calvino   (1965)   1.5
  Aye, and Gomorrah   Samuel R. Delany   (1967)   4
  Codemus   Tor Age Bringsvaerd   (1968)   3.5
  Nine Lives   Ursula K. Le Guin   (1969)   2.5

1970s: 18 stories, avg 3.1
  Inconstant Moon   Larry Niven   (1971)   4
  The Gold at the Starbow's End   Frederik Pohl   (1971)   4.5
  The New Prehistory   Rene Rebetez-Cortes   (1972)   2
  A Meeting With Medusa   Arthur C. Clarke   (1972)   3.5
  The Fifth Head of Cerberus   Gene Wolfe   (1972)   2
  Weihnachtsabend   Keith Roberts   (1972)   3
  Nobody's Home   Joanna Russ   (1972)   2.5
  The Valley of Echoes   Gerard Klein   (1973)   3.5
  Captain Nemo's Last Adventure   Josef Nesvadba   (1973)   2
  Party Line   Gerard Klein   (1973)   3.5
  Triceratops   Kono Tensei   (1974)   4
  Pairpuppets   Manuel van Loggem   (1974)   3.5
  Angouleme   Thomas M. Disch   (1974)   2
  The Phantom of Kansas   John Varley   (1976)   5
  Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon   Stanislaw Lem   (1977)   2
  The Lens   Annemarie van Ewyck   (1977)   3
  I was the First to Find You   Kirill Bulychev   (1977)   4
  How Erg the Self-inducting Slew a Paleface   Stanislaw Lem   (1977)   2.5

1980s: 3 stories, avg 2.8
  The Chaste Planet   John Updike   (1983)   2
  The Way to Amalteia   Arkady and Boris Strugatsky   (1984)   3.5
  On the Inside Track   Karl Michael Armer   (1986)   3

[Dr. Awkward · Rating 4 out of 5]

This absolute unit of a book left me with very mixed feelings.

A broad range of stories with an equivalent range of sources and authors. The editorial comments were heavily biased towards a very particular literary approach; not necessarily a negative, but may sometimes color your view of a story before you start reading it. I almost gave three rather than four stars for this reason, but the actual quality of stories on the whole was high enough to merit the fourth.

All in all, worth the read for anyone interested in experiencing new, different, or simply more scifi -- and maybe doubly so for those coming from outside the field of scifi as new readers -- just know what to expect out of it before you head in.

[Questron64 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved everything in this book. I'd previously only read hard science fiction and seeing the breadth of what SF has to offer was really eye-opening. I especially liked The Fifth Head of Cerberus which I read over a week ago and am still thinking about.

This is over 1,000 pages over pure gold. All of it is good, all of it has something great to offer.

The only criticism I have is a small one, it doesn't tell you when the stories were published. The editor wrote a good introduction to each author before the story but doesn't tell you when the story was published. Only after I finished the book did I discover there's a list at the end that tells you when they were published, but why not just include that information with the story itself?

[Mark Isaak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fifty-two stories by almost as many writers, spanning the years 1937-1977. Hartwell does a good job highlighting the influential writers (Campbell, Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, ...), and he showcases several foreign authors I was not familiar with. My main gripe is that he also includes a few authors who I do not really consider science fiction writers, namely Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, and Steve Allen. Even though those authors' stories qualify as science fiction, they are outliers; Calvino and Borges fit better in an "experimental" genre, and Allen published only the one piece of science fiction. Still, the rest of the book gives a good overview of the genre through the 1970s.

[Nihal Vrana · Rating 4 out of 5]

From a diversity point of view, it is an excellent collection. It is a bit hard to figure out what was the selection criteria, it feels more or less random. But, the quality of the stories and the obscureness of some of them are really nice. But, on the other hand, the editorial texts were unbearable, I do not remember if I have ever been this annoyed by Editorial introductions in my life. Everything was influenced by American SF, they are pompous and trite in their content; just small tidbits to annoy you before you start the story.

[John Teske · Rating 5 out of 5]

A long slog through this nearly 1100 page anthology of varied short stories.

Some were serious sci fi; others were more surreal and less futuristic. Phil Dick's Second Variety was excellent, as was Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron. For these two short stories alone, I plan to keep the whole volume. (Lately I have been donating my books to Little Lending Libraries or giving them to friends.)

Overall, a great gift from one of my uncles so long ago (published 1989) that I finally got around to reading.

[Earl Truss · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very large book, sort of a history of world science fiction with examples. Many classic stories that many of us have probably read before. Most of the stories were good - only a few that were not.

[Deborah Sowery-Quinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read through this book over many, many months. As usual with this type of anthology, & Sci Fi not really being my normal go-to genre, there were stories I loved, some just ok, some I didn't know what the hell was going on & some just plain tedious.

[Albert_Camus_lives]

The New Prehistory 1972 story by René Rebetez-Cortes

[Mick · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's great writing. But very dated.

[Christopher K · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely amazing and immensely varied collection of sci fi ; for anyone who is a fan this is a must have collection.

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you just read one anthology of science fiction in your life, make this one it. Sublime. As it's name implies, it includes authors from around the world instead of just North America and the UK.

Selections:

* "Forward"
* "Introduction"
* "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut.
* "Forgetfulness" by John W. Campbell, Jr.
* "Special Flight" by John Berryman.
* "Chronopolis" by J. G. Ballard.
* "Triceratops" by Kono Sensei.
* "The Man Who Lost the Sea" by Theodore Sturgeon.
* "On the Inside Track" by Karl Michael Armer.
* "The Golem" by Avram Davidson. This is in many anthologies, for a good reason. It's is, surprisingly, about a Golem.
* "The New Pre-History" by Rene Rebetez-Cortez.
* "A Meeting with Medusa" by Arthur C. Clarke. One of the best first contact stories ever written.
* "The Valley of Echoes" by Gerard Klein.
* "The Fifth Head of Cerebus" by Gene Wolfe. Very imaginative novella of humans (mostly French) who colonize a planet, kick science to the curb ... except for one guy. WARNING: Lots of animal cruelty here.
* "The Chaste Planet" by John Updike.
* "The Blind Pilot" by Nathalie-Charles Hennenberg.
* "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed" by Alfred Bester.
* "Pairpuppets" by Manuel van Loggem.
* "Two Dooms" by C. M. Kornbluth.
* "The Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon" by Stanislaw Lem.
* "The Green Hills of Earth" by Robert A. Heinlein.
* "Ghost V" by Robert Sheckley.
* "The Phantom of Kansas" by John Varley. A woman wakes up to discover that she's the third clone of herself. Although on the surface, this story is about clones, underneath it's about how society treats the underprivileged. Interesting new art form described.
* "Captain Nemo's Last Adventure" by Josef Nesvadba.
* "Inconstant Moon" by Larry Niven. This is in many other anthologies, for good reason. This is hard sci-fi with great dialogue and an imaginative natural disaster. Only problem is that this is set in the 1970s.
* "The Gold at the Starbow's End" by Frederick Pohl.
* "A Sign in Space" by Italo Calvino.
* "The Spiral" Also by Italo Calvino.
* "The Dead Past" by Isaac Asimov.
* "The Lens" by Annemarie van Ewyk.
* "The Hurkle is a Happy Beast" by Theodore Sturgeon.
* "Zero Hour" by Ray Bradbury.
* "Nine Lives" by Ursula K. LeGuin. Another clone story. This time, ten clones of one person come to mine a planet with two "normal" guys ... and the things get weird.
* "The Muse" by Anthony Burgess.
* "The Public Hating" by Steve Allen.
* "Poor Superman" by Fritz Lieber.
* "Angouleme" by Thomas M. Disch.
* "Stranger Station" by Damon Knight.
* "The Dead Fish" by Boris Vian.
* "I Was the First to Find You" by Kirill Bull Chevy.
* "The Lineman" by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
* "Tlon, Uqbar, and Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges.
* "Codemus" by Tor Age Bringsvaerd.
* "A Kind of Artistry" by Brian Aldiss.
* "Second Variety" by Philip K. Dick.
* "Weihnachtsabend" by Keith Roberts.
* "I Do Not Love Thee, Doctor Fell" by Robert Bloch.
* "Aye, And Gomorrah ..." by Samuel R. Delaney.
* "How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface" by Stanislaw Lem.
* "Nobody's Home" by Joanna Russ.
* "Party Line" by Gerard Klein.
* "The Proud Robot" by Lewis Padgett.
* "Vintage Season" by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore.
* "The Way to Amalteia" by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a massive, wide-ranging collection of science fiction pieces, compiled by Hartwell, the long-time editor of the "Year's Best SF" & "Year's Best Fantasy" serieses, a couple of which I have read and enjoyed. There can be no question regarding his ability to identify first-rate imaginative writing. The pieces in this collection run the gamut of SF from the 1930s or 1940s up to 1989, and a number of them are by foreign scribes, mostly from Europe, along with the expected Americans and Englishmen. It is not organized chronologically or thematically, and you could read it in any order you feel like.

Each piece is prefaced by an effective introduction to the author's work and its place in the SF society. Like a good anthology should, it introduces the reader to a number of fascinating writers that are most likely not known to those who do not regularly attend SF conventions, including at least one (Manuel van Loggem) whose piece I loved but whom I was unable to find any work by. Also in this category could go the Strugatsky brothers, Keith Roberts, Kirill Bulychev, and Karl Michael Armer, all of whom contribute interesting stories. Of course many of the genre's heavy hitters are also represented: Campbell, Heinlein, Ballard, Sturgeon, Clarke, Dick, Lem, Asimov, Bradbury, Le Guin, Lem, Bester, Delany, Pohl, Leiber, and Disch are all here. And there is also another interesting cohort of writers present (and perhaps in this way it sets itself apart from other anthologies): a handful of literary writers who have tried their hand at the occasional SF piece, or who have one foot in and one out of the genre: Borges, Updike, Vonnegut, and Anthony Burgess (who delivers a hilarious piece about a time traveler who is determined to spend some time with Shakespeare).

A few of the pieces had a lasting impact, enough so that I had to reread them. Among these were John Varley's "The Phantom of Kansas", a brilliant tale of a weather artist who keeps getting killed by a determined assassin (and resurrected, something for which there is a technology available.) Brian Aldiss impressed me enough with his elegant and vivid imaginings that I had to pick up one of his titles, and the same goes for the murky and unique Gene Wolfe. Samuel Delany mixes science fiction and sexual confusion into an energetic brew in "Aye, and Gomorrah..." I also had to grab some Robert Sheckley after reading his semi-comic tale about a ghost-ridden planet that challenges the abilities of a couple of young planet decontamination experts.

If you are an established fan, or a reader who is looking to dip into an intelligent, interesting mix of SF pieces and writers, then I can confidently recommend this to you.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual rating: 4.5 stars.

I've read hundreds of science fiction anthologies over the years. I never expect to read more than two or three memorable stories per collection; the rest are always second-rate filler. Not this time.

I picked this anthology up at a public library sale of discontinued books, which means it's likely out of print, and that's too bad. It's a 1,000-plus page collection of short stories and novellas, featuring many of the great science fiction authors and several less familiar foreign writers: Kurt Vonnegut, John Campbell, Theodore Sturgeon, J. G. Ballard, Arthur C. Clarke, Gene Wolfe, John Updike, Stanislaw Lem, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Frederick Pohl, Ray Bradbury, Ursula Le Guin, Antony Burgess, Jorge Luis Borges, Philip K. Dick, Arkady & Boris Strugatsky. Every story is outstanding; there are no B-sides. The publisher must have paid a fortune in royalties.

I had read a few of the included stories and novellas when I was younger. I'm happy to say they stand the test of time and are still excellent. Many stories in this anthology were new to me; they too are brilliant. I was thrilled to find the collection included Gene Wolfe's brilliant The Fifth Head of Cerberus, which I've been wanting to re-read for some time (it was even better than I remembered, by the way). And I must say this: damn, Theodore Sturgeon rocked!

I'm telling you, this is the best SF anthology I've come across. I just checked: it is out of print, but used and some new copies are available on Amazon. If you collect science fiction anthologies, you'll want this one in your collection.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

An exhaustive (and exhausting) survey of world science fiction, this book was a very uneven read. Some stories fascinated, some bewildered (and not in a good way), and the rest fell somewhere in between. A lot of recognizable names were included, but the stories selected were not always among their best known. And there were a lot of authors that this reader was completely unfamiliar with. One stand out in the bunch was an Italian, Italo Colvino. The editor included two of his stories, one of which, The Spiral, is one of the most beautifully written pieces of literature that I can remember reading. I hope to find that more of his work has been published and is available. I found some of the pieces to be quite dated. What was gee-whiz possible in the mid 20th century has become ho-hum passe in the early 21st. But even so, as survey, one could have done worse.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty hit and miss. A lot of translations, and quite a few "space adventure"-type stories.

Here's my favorites:
Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The Man Who Lost the Sea, Theodore Sturgeon
The Men who Murdered Mohammed, Alfred Bester
The Phantom of Kansas, John Varley
Inconstant Moon, Larry Niven
The Gold at Starbow's End, Frederik Pohl
Stranger Station, Damon Knight
Second Variety, Philip K Dick
Vintage Season, Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore (though it could be shortened by 80% and be much better for it)

I was hoping to find some lesser-known authors here that I could dig into, but that wasn't really the case. Maybe the translations were bad, but it felt like there was a lot of filler here.

[Brunnstag · Rating 2 out of 5]

Being a complete newbie to the Sci-Fi genre (I read mostly fantasy) I picked this up at the library. I didn't notice at the time that the book was only one year younger then I am, and the majority of the stories were quite a bit older then the publication date of this collection. I enjoyed a few of the stories in it, but not enough that I would recommend this to anyone. I'm not sure whether it was the age of the writing, and that I'm simply not a fan of the styles at the time, or if the stories were legitimately not good. I just found this collection lacking, and would recommend that if you are new to the Sci-Fi world like I am, that you look for a newer, up to date collection that will be closer to the writing styles today.

[Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

52 short stories, not all good but definitely worth reading. Some of the standouts for me was: Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut (which I remember reading in high school English); The Blind Pilot by Nathalie-Charles Henneberg; Two Dooms by C.M. Kornbluth; Ghost V by Robert Sheckley; Inconstant Moon by Larry Niven; Zero Hour by Ray Bradbury; Second Variety by Philip K. Dick; Party Line by Gerard Klein; Vintage Season by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore; The Way to Amalteia by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.