Robert Silverberg

to Blood on the Mink. The market for science fiction magazines had collapsed in the late 1950s, so he was writing other stuff. These stories are from 1959 to 1962, and Silverberg wrote and forgot ‘em until Hard Case Crime reprinted them.

Blood on the Mink's narrator is an undercover operative, Nick, called in to impersonate a mobster named Vic Lowney. Vic gets snatched by the Feds at the Chicago airport en route from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. Nick takes his place. His mission? Find the engraving plates for some high-quality counterfeit bills that have shown up in the City of Brotherly Love. Vic was going there to buy them for a LA gang.

But Vic’s gang isn’t the only one interested in buying the plates, and the representative of one knows Nick isn’t whom he claims.

Beautiful dames and double crosses follow as Nick sets three gangs against each other. Nick is a hard-bitten man. He doesn’t express much fear or concern over the collateral damage which includes the dead woman on the cover.

It was fun and diverting, but I have no idea how it stacks up to other crime novels.

I actually liked the shorter pieces in the book better.

Eddie’s involved in counterfeiting too. He’s a courier for plates from Chicago to LA. The rules for making the deliver are pretty cut: show up at a given rooming house and be there on a specified schedule to wait – alone-- for pick up. But a hot blonde shows up at the rooming house, the “Dangerous Doll” of the title. Poor Eddie. He’s not very bright, and he has no idea what she’s got planned for him. It’s my favorite story here.

Mike Keller isn’t a cop or a criminal, just a traveling salesman making his rounds through Central Wisconsin. But he finds himself, after being a good Samaritan and checking up on the cries of a woman in a nearby hotel room, caught up in “One Night of Violence”. That woman has been kidnapped by some Chicago mobsters to have their revenge on some competitors, and Keller is coerced into participating.… (more)

An anthology with the stories voted by the members of the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) as the best SF short stories before the start of the Nebula Awards (up to 1964). Only short stories allowed (no novellas) and only one story allowed per author gets published.

The result is a delightful anthology, filled with strong classic SF stories. Some of them are mind-blowing masterpieces. Others feel a bit dated (we are talking about really old stories here) but still have something special that would make professional writers vote for them as some of the best stories in the genre: powerful ideas, emotional impact...

If you have any interest in the history of science fiction then this is as close to required reading as it gets. Even if you don't particularly care about the history of the genre this anthology is too good to miss.

Contents (I'll use spoiler tags when commenting on the stories, but it's mostly mild spoilers giving a general description of the story):

Stanley G. Weinbaum, "A Martian Odyssey" (1934): On the first expedition to Mars, one of the astronauts has an accident while exploring and must return on foot. On his way, he meets several life forms native to the planet. The story is told by the returning explorer to the rest of the team when he finally rejoins them. While the general idea is very simple, I was impressed by how in a 1934 story the author explored concepts like the aliens having different kinds of intelligence, so that communication with humans would be difficult not because of lack of intelligence on any of the two interlocutors, but because of how differently they reason. It's a tragedy that the author would die from cancer only a year after publishing this story, at 33 years old.

John W. Campbell, "Twilight" (1934): : Another story told by one of the characters in conversation form. In this case the character is telling how he met a person who claimed to be a time traveler. The traveler himself is from several centuries in the future, but claimed to have traveled several million years to his own future, and on his return had miscalculated and traveled back to the 20th century. The point of the story is not the details of how the time travel is possible, but it's mostly about setting a mood of how humanity would reach great heights but then decline due to a loss of their own curiosity and will to explore and progress. There is clearly some H. G. Wells influence here.

Lester del Rey, "Helen O'Loy" (1938): A couple of scientist build a robot to take care of household duties, but they make it too human. The gender roles are of its time, but the questions the story asks about the boundary between human and artificial intelligence, and the emotional implications, are thoroughly modern.

Robert A. Heinlein, "The Roads Must Roll" (1940): In this version of the future, public transportation is done through moving roads. All the economy depends on them, so if the workers were to strike, it could be a disaster. Quite an interesting story. This mode of transportation has not come to pass, but that's not the point. The story remains relevant for its sociological content, and it also has action with typical Heinlein heroes.

Theodore Sturgeon, "Microcosmic God" (1941): A scientist creates a civilization of fast-living intelligent beings and forces them to generate scientific progress. Another awe-inspiring original idea that since then has had more modern remakes (see Sandkings by George R. R. Martin, for example), but this is the original.

Isaac Asimov, "Nightfall" (1941): ...

A. E. van Vogt, "The Weapon Shop" (1942): ...

Lewis Padgett, "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" (1943): ...

Clifford D. Simak, "Huddling Place" (1944): ...

Fredric Brown, "Arena" (1944): ...

Murray Leinster, "First Contact" (1945): ...

Judith Merril, "That Only a Mother" (1948): ...

Cordwainer Smith, "Scanners Live in Vain" (1948): ...

Ray Bradbury, "Mars is Heaven!" (1948): ...

Cyril M. Kornbluth, "The Little Black Bag" (1950): ...

Richard Matheson, "Born of Man and Woman" (1950): ...

Fritz Leiber, "Coming Attraction" (1950): ...

Anthony Boucher, "The Quest for Saint Aquin" (1951): ...

James Blish, "Surface Tension" (1952): ...

Arthur C. Clarke, "The Nine Billion Names of God" (1953): ...

Jerome Bixby, "It's a Good Life" (1953): ...

Tom Godwin, "The Cold Equations" (1954): ...

Alfred Bester, "Fondly Fahrenheit" (1954): ...

Damon Knight, "The Country of the Kind" (1955): ...

Daniel Keyes, "Flowers for Algernon" (1959): ...

Roger Zelazny, "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" (1963): ...… (more)

3 novellas.
Gregory Benford: nice concept, but he cut too many corners to make the grandiose ending satisfying. The tension builds, and then dissipates too quickly, as we read about the aliens and their manipulations of sasquatch.

Clifford Simak: I like Simak, but this story is a bit make-shift. A photographer from the future records some juicy scenes from the past and then gets eaten by a bear.

These two stories are mildly entertaining and worth a pleasant read…but Norman Spinrad’s story caps the bunch and compensates for any weaknesses of the others—how should mankind react against a universe that has no other life forms…anywhere?… (more)