Shot in the Dark

by Judith Merril (Editor)

Twenty-three stories, in the sf-fantasy-mystery genre, The Sky Was Full of Ships, by Theodore Sturgeon; The Halfling, by Leigh Brackett; Knock, by Fredric Brown; Voices in the Dust, by Gerald Kersh; A Hitch in Time, by Frederik Pohl [as by James MacCreigh]; Gentlemen, Be Seated!, by Robert A. Heinlein; Nightmare Number Three, by Stephen Vincent Benét; The Star, by H. G. Wells; The Dark Angel, by Henry Kuttner; Mr. Lupescu, by Anthony Boucher; The Day of the Deepies, by Murray Leinster; The Shadow and the Flash, by Jack London; Spokesman for Terra, by John B. Michel [as by Hugh Raymond]; He Was Asking After You, by Margery Allingham; Strange Playfellow, by Isaac Asimov; Brooklyn Project, by William Tenn; Interview with a Lemming, by James Thurber; Mars Is Heaven!, by Ray Bradbury; Who Is Charles Avison? by Edison Marshall; The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, by Edgar Allan Poe; The Bronze Parrot, by R. Austin Freeman Life on the Moon, by Alexander Samalman; Blunder, by Philip Wylie

308 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

Josephine Juliet Grossman

aka Cyril Judd (with C.M. Kornbluth)

Judith Josephine Grossman (Boston, Massachusetts, January 21, 1923 - Toronto, Ontario, September 12, 1997), who took the pen-name Judith Merril about 1945, was an American and then Canadian science fiction writer, editor and political activist.

Although Judith Merril's first paid writing was in other genres, in her first few years of writing published science fiction she wrote her three novels (all but the first in collaboration with C.M. Kornbluth) and some stories. Her roughly four decades in that genre also included writing 26 published short stories, and editing a similar number of anthologies.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shot in the Dark was Merril's first anthology, and was an excellent blend of mystery, fantasy, and science fiction, both contemporary (but remember the book appeared in 1950) and classic. It contains twenty-three stories from sf masters like Theodore Sturgeon, Leigh Brackett, Fredric Brown, Frederik Pohl (as James MacCreigh), Robert Heinlein, H.G. Wells, Catherine L. Moore and Henry Kuttner (as Lewis Padgett), Murray Leinster, William Tenn, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Philip Wylie, John Michel (as Hugh Raymond), as well as mainstream authors such as Margery Allingham, James Thurber, Edgar Allan Poe, Gerald Kersh, Stephen Vincent Benet, and Jack London. The cover by Herman E. Bischoff looks like a typical noir mystery genre painting, and I wonder what readers who were expecting Sam Spade thought when they got Sturgeon's The Sky Was Full of Ships, Brackett's The Halfling, Brown's Knock, and Bradbury's Mars is Heaven. It's a really excellent early anthology in a number of ways.

[Roybot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun, if very dated, stories from the classic era of sci-fi.