Edited by William Sloane.
"All the stories human beings tell are about ourselves." The
strangest and most distant corners of the universe throng into this book but it still remains true-all the stories are, at heart, about
ourselves, about human beings with human needs and emotions. The
places and situations they find themselves in are another matter. The
writers have given free rein to the kind of imagination that H. G. Wells showed in his stories and this book shows the direction in which that
tradition is now leading. The range of the stories is immense. "First Contact", for example, tells how a space-ship from earth encountered
for the first time a ship from another, unknown world and how, hanging
there in the deeps of space, both were trapped in a terrible dilemma. In total contrast is a story by Ray Bradbury telling, quite simply, how
two girls say goodbye to the earth-town they love, the night before they leave to join their fiancées on Mars. Then there is the child, lost in
the world because she belongs to another, greater race, who finds her
home among humans in the end. Some of the stories are tense with
excitement, some are sad, some are outright funny; but in all of them
there are vivid reality and characters one cares about. There is nothing here of the old, hackneyed 'space opera'-stories that are classed as
fiction only because they could not possibly be true and as science
because no normal reader can make sense of them. Each of the pieces in
this book is an original and excellent example of story-telling. Most of them are taken from very recent sources, but already some of them have
become classics. Of the authors, some are famous – Arthur Clarke, Ray
Bradbury, Eric Frank Russell, John Christopher, Murray Leinster, and
Clifford Simak, for example – and there are also some brilliant newcomers
who will certainly be heard of again.
Contents:
- About This Book by William Sloane
- The Wilderness by Ray Bradbury
- Starbride by Anthony Boucher
- Homeland (aka The Statue) by Mari Wolf
- Let Nothing You Dismay by William Sloane
- A Scent of Sarsaparilla by Ray Bradbury
- Noise Level by Raymond F. Jones
- First Contact by Murray Leinster
- Franchise by Kris Neville
- In Value Deceived by H. B. Fyfe
- Black Eyes and the Daily Grind by Milton Lesser
- Socrates by John Christopher
- In Hiding by Wilmar H. Shiras
- Bettyann by Kris Neville
- The Ant and the Eye by Chad Oliver
- Beep by James Blish
- And Then There Were None by Eric Frank Russell
- The Girls from Earth by Frank M. Robinson
- Minister Without Portfolio by Mildred Clingerman
- The Head Hunters by Ralph Williams
- The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke
- The Forgotten Enemy by Arthur C. Clarke
- The Answers (aka ...And the Truth Shall Make You Free) by Clifford D. Simak
