Assorted SF authors including Fredric Brown, Ray Bradbury, Murray Leinster, Jack Vance

Not to be confused with Science Fiction Omnibus, a paperback subset...

In the 1940s through 1960s, Groff Conklin was *the* editor for SF anthologies. This was his fourth early big collection, published in 1952. The introduction has some interesting notes on how SF publishing had changed from his first collection seven years earlier. With the arrival of both Galaxy and Fantasy & Science Fiction, Astounding was no longer the only premium outlet for SF. Since his first anthology, *fifty* more anthologies had appeared! In his opinion, most of the pulp output prior to 1950 had appeared in some book.

I've divided the stories into those that to me are still worth reading today, those that are fine if you have the collection in hand, and those to be skipped. The three paperbacks were later published with parts of Omnibus: Strange Travels in Science Fiction (ST), Strange Adventures in Science Fiction (SA), and Science Fiction Omnibus (SFO). I've noted which of the best stories appear in those. Strange Travels has the best hit rate, though none have my favorite story "And Be Merry...".

The following are the stories I think either hold up well, or at least have some notable aspect. "And Be Merry..." was the standout for me.

John Thomas's Cube (Atlantic Monthly, 1945) John Leimert - even in 1952 anthologists looked outside the pulps; this enjoyable satire about a mysterious tiny immovable metal cube in a boy's backyard is from The Atlantic Monthly. (ST)

And Be Merry ... (Astounding, 1950) Katherine MacLean -- an amazingly modern short story; character-driven with a strong science core, leaves a lot for the reader to figure out. (Not reprinted by Conklin, but in her collection The Diploids)

The Box (Thrilling Wonder, 1949) James Blish -- Stephen King's The Dome in fifteen pages; fun. (SA)

The Color Out of Space (Amazing, 1945) H. P. Lovecraft -- a revision of the 1927 story for Amazing Stories; still potent almost 100 years later. (ST, SFO and pretty much everywhere)

The Head Hunters (Astounding, 1951) Ralph Williams -- Predator in the north; short and to the point with surprisingly amoral characters. (Only in another obscure anthology, Stories for Tomorrow ed. by Sloane)

Kaleidoscope (Thrilling Wonder, 1949) Ray Bradbury -- an accident leaves a spaceship crew floating away to their doom in spacesuits; classic Bradbury if you can overlook one character is struck by meteors not once but twice within an hour. (ST, SFO)

What You Need (Astounding, 1945) Lewis Padgett (i.e., Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore) -- a good example of a Padgett story about a shop that sells select customers exactly what they need. Adapted for the Twilight Zone.

The Choice (Punch, 1952) Wayland Hilton-Young -- a half-page short-short about a round-trip to the future. (SA)

The War Against the Moon (1927) André Maurois -- in a future a handful of newspaper magnates run the world and decide the only way to unite mankind is to engineer a war on the uninhabited Moon. Unfortunately... A fascinating bit of satire.

Manners of the Age (Galaxy, 1952) H. B. Fyfe - This begins as a comic picture of a future Earth inhabited by a few recluses who chose to stay and be served by robots rather than leave for other planets. One bored male decides to actually travel and visit a female neighbor. Things turn very dark at the end though the tone never changes. An interesting example of the sociological approach Galaxy brought to SF. (ST)

The Weapon (Astounding, 1951) Fredric Brown -- a good example of the very short stories Brown was famous for, as a weapons scientist, spending a quiet event with his mentally challenged son, is visited by a stranger committed to changing his ways. (ST, SFO)

The Scarlet Plague (1913) Jack London -- a classic; like COVID-19, London's plague spread because of a five-day gestation period, but this novelette, told in flashback in a post-apocalyptic US is more about class struggle than epidemiology. (ST)

The following were enjoyable, but not not breakout:

The Rag Thing (F&SF, 1951) David Grinnell -- horror short about the title creature. Grinnell was Donald A. Wollheim.

The Doorbell (Wonder Stories, 1934) David H. Keller, M.D. -- a revenge tale more Alfred Hitchcock than SF. (SA)

A Subway Named Mobius (Astounding, 1950) A. J. Deutsch -- the Boston MTA becomes so complex it folds into another dimension; mostly an idea story but well-told. (ST, SFO)

Shipshape Home (Galaxy, 1952) Richard Matheson -- a creepy janitor and a NYC building with very low rent; OK as a Twilight Zone story. (ST)

Alexander the Bait (Astounding, 1946) William Tenn -- typical Campbellian tale of motivating humans to head into space; passable mostly because of Tenn's voice.

"Nothing Happens on the Moon" (Astounding, 1939) Paul Ernst -- action tale involving one man and an invisible monster; no surprises. (ST)

Winner Lose All (Galaxy, 1951) Jack Vance -- more SFnal than typical Vance as humans and an alien both vie for a rich uranium lode on a distant planet.

Test Piece (Other Worlds, 1951) Eric Frank Russell -- Humans land on a planet where a scout arrived, stayed, and eventually died a hundred year earlier. Now the natives want to show them his shrine. Thanks to a mind-reading device on their ship, the landing party learns that the scout told the native to kill any humans who say two specific words. The two words are never said but one is pretty obvious, and surprising for 1951. Interesting but far too contrived. (SFO)

Environment (Astounding, 1944) Chester S. Geier -- searching for a lost expedition, two scouts find an empty city surrounded by abandoned spaceships; the ending is obvious but developed reasonably well. (SA)

Spectator Sport (Thrilling Wonder, 1950) John D. MacDonald -- very quickly told tale of a time traveler going 400 years forward only to be quickly dismissed by a distracted future; the resolution is prescient for 1950 and a bit grisly. (SA, SFO)

A Stone and a Spear (Galaxy, 1950) Raymond F. Jones -- close to a skip for me but boosted because it's such a heartfelt story about science in service of war (ST)

The following are dated or awful. Skip!

Hyperpilosity (Astounding, 1938) L. Sprague de Camp story about a pandemic that leads to everyone becoming extremely hirsute; embarrassing stereotypes throughout.

The Thing in the Woods (Amazing, 1935) Fletcher Pratt - a monster fungus action comedy that doesn't really click.

The Bees from Borneo (Amazing, 1931) Will H. Gray -- a dry narration of a man developing a strain of killer bees that undoes civilization.

The Conqueror (Astounding, 1952) Mark Clifton -- another narration of the world changed, like Bees, but this time by an edible dahlia root, and, for once, not set in the US.

Never Underestimate ... (IF ( )

This collection of 11 reprinted tales edited by Groff Conklin features some of the most skilled storytellers in vintage SF including Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, H.P. Lovecraft, Lester Del Rey, Ray Bradbury, Frederic Brown, and more. There were at least three entries that I recalled reading in other collections as recently as a few months ago, but they were absolutely worth a second pass.

In A.J. Deutsch’s “A Subway Named Mobius,” an entire passenger train is lost for months in a closed rail system. When transportation officials and a local mathematician with a theory attempt to locate the train, they discover that they can hear it—in multiple locations—but cannot see it since it has passed into another dimension. Will the train ever reemerge and if so, how can this be prevented from happening again?

In one of H.P. Lovecraft’s most popular stories, a meteorite crashes into a field of crops where it begins to poison both soil and water, driving the farmer and his family insane. It’s soon discovered that the vile, luminous substance that infected the area might be intelligent. How will the locals rid themselves of “The Colour Out of Space”?

When alien psychologists learn that Earth has finally achieved interstellar travel, the decision is made to invite them into the Federation of Planets, an honor which no race has ever turned down... until now. Discover why in Isaac Asimov's "Homo Sol."

Anthony Boucher brings us hapless ventriloquist Paul Peters who encounters a benevolent extraterrestrial creature at a local zoo. The alien, relieved to finally find someone with whom he can communicate, enlists Paul’s help in finding his long lost love. At first, the pair is undecided on a strategy until Paul comes up with a new routine known as “The Star Dummy.”

A spaceship explodes ejecting its helpless crew into space. Fortunately, they’d had just enough time to don their spacesuits—but not their personal propulsion systems. As a result, each man is hurled on an uncontrollable trajectory with just enough time to settle their differences and make peace with their collective fate in Ray Bradbury’s “Kaleidoscope.”

When an Earth naval vessel lands on the alien world Shaksembender, the crew of three is greeted by a party of wary copper-skinned humanoids who had been expecting their arrival based on the prophesy of Fraser, the first human space explorer to visit their planet 300 years ago. Using a hidden mind-reading device against the alien emissary, the pilot of the Earth ship discovers that Fraser warned the aliens to be circumspect if the next human explorers utter two specific words… but will we ever learn those words in Eric Frank Russell’s “Test Piece”?

The incompetence of bureaucracy at a Galactic level is showcased in Murray Leinster's "Plague." When all the women of the planet Pharona are consumed and killed by a bizarre luminescent organism, the planet is placed in quarantine and Space Navy reservist Ben Sholto is dispatched in his private vessel to ensure no one escapes. When a ship, piloted by Ben's lost love Sally, emerges from Pharona, he takes her aboard in an attempt to cure her, making them both fugitives.

In John D. MacDonald's "Spectator Sport," a scientist travels into the future only to find society under control of a government that does not take kindly to independent thinking and prefers its citizens to be docile zombies.

In Arthur C. Clarke's much reprinted "History Lesson," five thousand years after an ice age has claimed all human life on Earth, Venusians arrive and uncover relics left in a vault—one of which is a roll of 35mm film that they believe depicts typical human behavior... or not.

A concerned citizen confronts physicist John Graham about the doomsday weapon Graham is developing and leaves him with a frightening metaphor that strikes close to the heart in Fredric Brown's "The Weapon."

Long after mankind has gone extinct, a race of heuristic automatons have taken over the Earth. A group of robotic biologists undertake experiments to reboot the human race in order to learn more about the concept of "Instinct," which is also the name of this classic tale by Lester Del Rey. ( )

Pretty uneven collection. It has some very good stories (Colour out of Space, Kaleidoscope, Instinct) and some pretty bad ones (Plague, Spectator Sport) ( )

4/5/22