First Step Outward

by Robert Hoskins (Editor)

13 short stories by well-known science-fiction writers.

Genres: Science Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1969

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good anthology of short science fiction stories that appeared concurrent with the first manned moon landing. It's one of Hoskins' best, and is divided into sections for the first journeys into space, to other planets, and to the stars. He selected good, thematic stories from the 1940s into the 1960s, with Golden Age writers like Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, Murray Leinster, and Robert A. Heinlein along with "newcomers" like Robert Silverberg, Terry Carr, K.M. O'Donnell, and Norman Spinrad. (Other contributors were Poul Anderson, Kris Neville, Ross Rocklynne, Frederik Pohl, and A. Bertram Chandler... a truly stellar line-up.) My favorites were the Heinlein, Gentlemen, Be Seated, and Leinster's classic First Contact.

[Lew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm fan of older Science Fiction and I found this to be an ok collection of stories. Most of the stories were from the late 50s to early 60s. Actually, the most interesting content was the beginning essay by Poul Anderson. This book was published a month after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Poul Anderson wrote his essay several months prior to the Apollo 11 moon mission. It is always fun to read someone's prediction for the future especially he did not know if the Apollo 11 mission would be successful.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

"Published a few months before the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, Robert Hoskins’ anthology First Step Outward (1969) charts an imagined future history of humanity’s exploration of the galaxy. The stories, gathered from some of the big names of the day (Robert Heinlein, Robert Silverberg, Theodore Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, etc.), are grouped as if part of the same future [...]"

[Nathaniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit of a grab-bag; some of the stories are classics but others I'd never heard of and can't particularly recommend. I'd probably put together a very different collection given the same prompts. Several of the space-is-too-psychologically-dangerous stories felt weird to include given the framing of a sci-fi anthology being published right before Apollo 11, since the evidence was already clearly trending hard in the other direction by that point. The interstellar stories also all focused on aliens rather than the act itself of traveling such distances.

[Philip Athans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the thirteen stories here, Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Man Who Lost the Sea” was my favorite, though there’s something to recommend each of them, however dated they may be.