Uncredited

This anthology is wide ranging in the dates of publication of the various stories and many of the authors are of the first rank; but the compilation lacks any sense of unity and the filler outweighs the few really excellent inclusions.
The entries from Heinlein, Bradbury and Brown are not surprising first rate. To complement these classics are a few good entries, but too many are filler and some are incoherent and a waste of good paper.
Overall, this anthology reinforces my opinion that show more sometimes it is better to stick with what you know (and like) than wade through sludge.
Not suitable for a second reading. show less

This is nowhere near a perfect collection, but it's a seriously good one. I've discovered authors that I'd never read before, and some that I will absolutely follow up on. Many of the usuals are here, and some weren't to my taste, and many had rather banal endings.

But the ones that hit? They HIT.

The book itself is beautiful, the price is right (especially for 900+ pages), and there's only a few glaring spelling errors. Overall, a good collection, and well worth the time.

One of the best collections of SF stories from the 20th century. Wells, Vonnegut, Silverberg... it's a great representation of the genre.
I recently found this anthology in a second-hand bookstore and I remembered just how much it had gripped me when I was a child.

It kicks off with Harrison Bergeron, which is probably the most familiar of Vonnegut's shorts, and
Rachel Pollack's "Is Your Child Using Drugs?" was frankly terrifying when I was younger and hasn't lost much of its power now that show more I'm old enough to understand what it's all about. The same goes for "Descending", and "The Engine at Heartspring's Center".

There's not a story here that I would hesitate to recommend on its own merits. show less

Superlative, imo. Only two stories didn't quite work for me. My edition does not credit Silverberg as editor, and in fact I doubt he chose the stories, as his taste and mine seldom converge. I'll hang onto this awhile and read it once more before giving it away, skipping the stories that are so memorable I don't need to read them again... which might turn out to be several of them....